Jihadists acting as Turkey's mercenaries in the occupied zones of North-East Syria continue committing crimes against the local people. In occupied Afrin, the Yazidis are acutely threatened.
The Turkish-backed mercenary group “Jabha al-Shamiya” kidnapped a Yazidi man named Mistefa Ehmed Misto in Afrin countryside on April 24.
According to information obtained from a local source in Afrin, the 58-year-old man, father of four, was living in the village of Qestel Cindo in the Shera district.
The Yazidi man experienced repeated atrocities in the hands of the jihadists. Before his abduction, he had been asked to pay a ransom of up to 7 thousand dollars.
Sources said that the “Jabha al-Shamiya” mercenaries took Mistefa Ehmed Misto to a prison in Azaz while no information is available on his whereabouts.
First threatened by the Ottomans, then by the ISIS and finally by the Turkish state, one persecution of the Yazidi people follows the next. Especially in the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin, Yazidis are under acute threat.
On March 8, 2018, the Turkish state, together with its jihadist militias, marched into the city of Afrin and established a reign of terror, worse than in the darkest days of the Baath regime. From the first day until today, the occupying forces have been targeting the Yazidi population in particular, committing the worst crimes under the silence of the world public. The Turkish state had Yazidis murdered, destroyed their holy places and abducted many into its torture chambers. The fate of some of the Yazidis is still unknown today. They were wanted to be forcibly Islamized by all means. Those who do not submit to this policy of Islamization are exposed to violence and persecution.
For example, 66-year-old Omer Şemo was shot dead by the occupation forces when he refused to convert to Islam. Since the occupation of Afrin, at least twelve Yazidis have been murdered for this reason. 50 Yazidi women have been kidnapped. The Yazidi cemeteries and mausoleums were destroyed by the occupation troops. The Yazidi cemeteries of Şêx Xerîb, Qerecirnê, Barsêxaton, Şêx Hemîd, Şêx Cinêd, Ebdellrehman and Henan, the Yazidi cultural center, the statue of Zarathustra and a Yazidi library were completely destroyed. In Dara Izza, the large Yazidi cemetery was plundered in search of treasures. Yazidi facilities were demolished and Islamic facilities were put in their place. At the moment, 3,000 of the former 25,000 Yazidis still live in Afrin. They are all targets of repression and persecution.
