{"id":125405,"date":"2025-05-05T10:49:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T10:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/?p=125405"},"modified":"2025-05-05T10:49:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T10:49:24","slug":"syria-appoints-u-s-sanctioned-figure-to-lead-military-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/125405\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria appoints U.S.-sanctioned figure to lead military division"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) \u2013<\/strong> The Ministry of Defense of the Syrian transitional government appointed on Monday Ahmad al-Hayes, known as &#8220;Abu Hatem Shaqra&#8221;\u2014a figure sanctioned by the United States\u2014as commander of the 86th Division operating in Deir ez-Zor, Hasakah, and Raqqa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abu Hatem Shaqra previously served as the leader of the Liberation and Construction Movement, a core component of the Turkish-backed First Legion within the Syrian National Army (SNA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Al-Hayes has been under U.S. sanctions since 2021 for his involvement in the killing of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, serious human rights violations, and connections to the Islamic State (ISIS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Oct. 12, 2019, while heading from Hasakah to Raqqa, militants of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a Turkish-backed faction led by al-Hayes, stopped Khalaf\u2019s car and shot her and her driver to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time of his blacklisting, the U.S. Treasury Department accused al-Hayes of overseeing human rights abuses carried out by the Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction, including extrajudicial killings at a prison in Aleppo in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was also implicated in the trafficking of Yazidi women and children and in recruiting former ISIS members into his ranks. Several former ISIS officials pledged allegiance to al-Hayes and assisted in his group&#8217;s extortion and ransom operations, according to the U.S. Treasury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>By Ahmad Othman<\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) \u2013 The Ministry of Defense of the Syrian transitional government appointed on Monday Ahmad al-Hayes, known as &#8220;Abu Hatem Shaqra&#8221;\u2014a figure sanctioned by the United States\u2014as commander of the 86th Division operating in Deir ez-Zor, Hasakah, and Raqqa. Abu Hatem Shaqra previously served as the leader of the Liberation and Construction [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":125406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-developments","category-syria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Syria appoints U.S.-sanctioned figure to lead military division<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) \u2013 The Ministry of Defense of the Syrian transitional government appointed on Monday Ahmad al-Hayes, known as &quot;Abu Hatem\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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