LONDON: German police have arrested an alleged Daesh commander after survivors of a massacre in which at least 700 people were murdered spotted him in Berlin.
Identified by authorities only as Raed E, the suspect is accused of being part of the force that led the 2014 massacre against eastern Syria’s Shaitat community in which hundreds of mostly unarmed civilians were tortured and beheaded.
The Times reported on Friday that Anwar Bunni, a Syrian lawyer representing victims of war crimes in Syria, said survivors of the attack who had fled to Germany played a “key role in his arrest.”
A Berlin-based witness to the massacre told the newspaper: “We had been chasing him for five years. He came to Germany in 2015 and stayed in Munich and Berlin. I posted about this two years ago.
“So, he flew to Turkey to hide but when I stopped talking about it, he felt safe and came back to Berlin. I am so glad that he was arrested.”
As well as his participation in the massacre, Raed is also accused of the torture of three people, including 13-year-old boy who he had suspended from a ceiling with his hands tied behind his back, and accepting bribes from Syrians to secure the release of relatives.
He has been formally charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, bodily harm, and membership in a foreign terrorist organization.
