QAMISHLI, Syrian (North Press) – On October 12, 2019 as world media was transmitting appalling images of civilian deaths and displacement within the context of the Turkish operation “Peace Spring” in Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad of northeast Syria known as Rojava, more shocking footage emerged.
It was circulated Hevrin Khalaf was dead, rather murdered savagely. Khalaf, a Kurdish female engineer from the city of Derik (al-Malikiyah) in far northeast Syria, was an active Syrian Kurdish politician. She was serving as Secretary-General of Future Syria Party.
The Future Syria Party was founded on March 27, 2018. It is active in northeast Syria. Ibrahim al-Qaftan was elected as the president of the party and Hevrin Khalaf was elected as secretary-general.
On that day of October, while heading from Hasakah to Raqqa, militants of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a Turkish-backed faction led by Ahmad al-Hayes, known as Abu Hatem Shaqra, stopped Khalaf’s car and shot her and her driver to death.
In July 2021, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction “for violations of the rights of civilians and systematic assault on the Syrian Kurds.”
The faction committed crimes and grave violations of human rights, including the execution of detainees, the kidnapping of Yezidi women and children, and having former ISIS members within its ranks.
Hevrin Khalaf was taken from the car. She was tortured and beaten by blunt objects. Her legs were broken. She was dragged from her hair until it was ripped from her scalp. Finally, she was shot dead. Her body, to the appeasement of killers, was riddled with bullets.
Mutilated, Hevrin’s body was defiled to the whole world. However, nobody recognized her; even family members could not verify the dead body was Hevrin.
“I moved a cloth that covered her chest and face and found nothing left of her body but a small piece from her jaw,” her mother Souad Muhammad told North Press at the time.
The group accused of the murder of the Kurdish politician is Ahrar al-Sharqiya, an affiliated faction of the Syrian National Army (SNA). The group renounces the death.
It remains unclear and rather an answered question, how that security checkpoints, among others, was overrun by jihadists fighters while battles were still ongoing in the two cities of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad.
A spokesman for the SNA said at the time SNA’s units had not made it as far as that area.
While Turkey, main SNA’ supporter said they were going to look into the matter, US State Department condemned “in the strongest of terms any mistreatment and extrajudicial execution of civilians or prisoners, and are looking further into these circumstances.”