The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Murder in Hassiya | Locals find hanged body of young man from Afrin

Aleppo Governorate – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:

SOHR sources say that locals in the village of Hassiya (Mirkan) in Ma’abatli district in rural Afrin found today the body of a young man from the village, hanged near the house he lives with his family, without knowing the reasons and the perpetrator.

A few days ago, reliable sources informed the Syrian Observatory that members of Ahrar Al-Sharqiya faction accused two women, one of whom works as a hair stylist with her neighbor, of acts of “witchcraft and sorcery”. Members of the faction interrogated the woman who is working as a hair stylist inside her house and in the presence of her husband, who was waiting in another room. The members of the faction accused the woman of “promoting” her neighbour’s acts of sorcery, which the woman denied.

Her neighbour also denied that the hair stylist helped her or promoted her work after she herself admitted to practicing sorcery. The factions’ members asked her to pay four million Syrian pounds after they beat her and uttered obscenities. The two women went to an officer of the Turkish-backed factions who lived in the same neighbourhood and asked for help, but in vain.

During the interrogation at the hair stylist’s home, the factions’ members asked her to practice vice, after they had also fined her, and threatened to execute her husband or imprison him in Turkish-backed factions’ prisons. The woman requested one day to meet their needs while she and her husband and children have managed to flee and reach Al-Shehaba area through smugglers the next day, and paid $1,250 to survive those members.

On June 26, reliable sources informed SOHR that “Suleiman Shah” faction, known as “Al-Amshat”, has forced the residents of Yakhour village (Kakhrah) of Maabatli district in Afrin countryside to leave their houses. The residents have been taken later to makeshift camps on the village’s northern outskirts.

According to SOHR sources, militiamen of “Al-Amshat” brought in several battalions affiliated to the faction, and took the houses as their headquarters, without revealing the reasons or motives behind this action.