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BEIRUT — The U.S. State Division on Monday banned entry into the U.S. of a Syrian intelligence member who appeared in a video leaked final 12 months displaying him fatally taking pictures folks in the course of the nation’s 12-year battle.
The ban towards Amjad Yousef, a member of Syria’s infamous Army Intelligence Department 227, consists of his spouse and fast members of his household, the State Division stated in an announcement.
Yousef was one in every of a number of Syrian safety brokers who appeared within the video through which dozens of blindfolded, certain males had been shot and thrown right into a trench.
The choice got here every week earlier than Syria’s battle enters its thirteenth 12 months. The conflict has killed almost half one million folks and left giant components of the nation destroyed.
“Because of right now’s motion, Yousef, in addition to his spouse, Anan Wasouf, and their fast members of the family, are ineligible for entry into america,” the State Division stated.
The 6-minute-43-second video clip stamped with the date April 16, 2013, exhibits intelligence members with a line of round 40 prisoners in an deserted constructing in Tadamon, a suburb of Damascus close to the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. For a lot of the conflict, the district was a entrance line between authorities forces and opposition fighters.
The prisoners are blindfolded, with their arms tied behind their backs. One after one other, the Department 227 gunmen stand them on the fringe of a trench exterior the constructing stuffed with outdated tires, then push or kick the boys in, taking pictures them as they fall.
In a merciless sport, the brokers inform among the prisoners that they’re going to cross by a sniper’s alley and that they need to run. The lads tumble onto the our bodies of those that went earlier than them. As our bodies pile up within the trench, some nonetheless transfer, and the gunmen shoot into the pile.
Then the gunmen set the our bodies on hearth, presumably to erase proof of the bloodbath.
The State Division stated Yousef, a warrant officer within the Syrian safety providers, was concerned in “gross violations of human rights” for his involvement within the killing of 41 unarmed civilians.
The assertion stated the U.S. calls on President Bashar Assad’s authorities “to stop all violations and abuses of human rights, together with however not restricted to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture.”
It stated the footage of the killings in Tadamon and ongoing atrocities in Syria “serves as a sobering reminder for why international locations mustn’t normalize relations with the Assad regime absent enduring progress in the direction of a political decision.”
Following the Feb. 6, earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria killing greater than 50,000 folks, together with about 6,000 in Syria, some Arab international ministers made uncommon visits to Damascus and met Assad for the primary time for the reason that battle started in March 2011.
Calls have been rising in latest months for Syria’s return to the Arab League. Syria was expelled from the 22-member group and boycotted by its neighbors after its uprising-turned-conflict broke out.
