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Al-K. and fellow combatants of the ‘Strangers of Mohassan’, a branch of Jabat al Nusra, executed a captured officer from Assad’s army on 10 July 2012. Video images they made themselves and which were shown in court show how the badly beaten man has to walk to his death. On the bank of the Euphrates, 20 shots are fired from an Al-K revolver. and a Kalashnikov took his own life. The victim’s last words: “By God, I didn’t kill anyone.”
“A summary execution without any form of trial,” said the officer. Al-K. said during the trial that he was at the execution, but tried to prevent it. He said he misfired on purpose. But according to the public prosecutor, the video shows just the opposite. Ahmad al-K. according to him had a leadership role and fired the first shot with his revolver. That indeed missed its target, but that was not on purpose, according to the officer. The bullets that Al-K. fired after that hit the victim, who was now half in the water. The man left behind a wife and three children.
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Video images they made themselves and which were shown in court show how the badly beaten man has to walk to his death.
Ⓒ YouTube
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Resistance to the Assad regime is legitimate, the officer said. “But the way it happened here is not. The motive was revenge. Because the victim was an Alevi and because he served in Assad’s army, where Ahmad al-K. was part of it not too long before that.”
Al-K. came to the Netherlands with his family in 2014 as an asylum seeker. He lived with his wife and seven children – one of whom is seriously ill – in Kapelle in Zeeland and was regarded as an exemplary integrated refugee. He rode on the neighborhood bus, played on the local football team and learned Dutch.
In 2018, he surfaced in a German investigation, after which he was arrested in May 2019. He’s been stuck ever since. According to the officer, Al-K lied. several times, adapting his statements to new information from the investigation.
“That makes it difficult to believe what he later stated. Ahmad al-K. claims that at the time of the execution he had distanced himself from the members of the ‘Strangers of Mohassan’ who had joined Jabat al Nusra. According to Ahmad al-K. “He was there, but he didn’t belong.” But that claim is belied by the video of the execution, the officer says. Videos of executions were not uncommon. It granted status, and raised money and weapons. Now such videos serve as evidence in criminal cases against jihadists.
The court will rule in two weeks on July 16.
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