DUBAI: Qatar, a major supporter of Syrian rebels, urged them yesterday not to kill Iranians seized two months ago near Damascus, after the captors threatened to start killing their 48 prisoners.
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor
Al Thani made the appeal following a request from Iran, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, to secure a release of the captives.
The Syrian rebel Al Baraa brigade said on Thursday it would start killing the Iranians unless Assad, battling an 18-month-old uprising, freed Syrian opposition detainees and stopped shelling civilian areas. A statement on the brigade’s Facebook page yesterday said it had extended its deadline by 24 hours at the request of mediators. The rebels say the captives are members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Tehran says they were pilgrims visiting Shia Muslim shrines. “As a general policy in the state of Qatar, we don’t accept the killing of prisoners,” Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem told Aljazeera television.
“We also don’t accept further escalation of the situation in Syria. We agree that all parties have their demands, but the basic principle is not to kill prisoners.”
The Baraa Brigade, which initially threatened to kill the Iranians after seizing them in early August, said in a video released on Thursday that negotiations over their fate “failed as a result of the betrayal of the Iranian and Syrian regimes”.
“We give the Syrian and Iranian regimes 48 hours to release prisoners, stop the shelling against unarmed civilians and the random killing of innocents or we will kill an Iranian prisoner for each martyr,” said a rebel wearing camouflage fatigues. REUTERS
