A Syrian man appeared before a Dutch court on Tuesday in a pretrial hearing after being accused of serving as an ISIS security chief in his home country between 2014 and 2018.
Ayham S, 38, with a black beard, T-shirt and tattoos on his upper arms, did not speak during the two-hour hearing at the Court of Rotterdam, which he attended with the help of an Arabic translator.
Prosecutors believe that he acted as an ISIS “security chief” in the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk near the Syrian capital Damascus.
The camp, which has been ravaged by fighting during the 12-year-long Syrian civil war, was stormed by ISIS in 2015 and retaken by government forces and allies in 2018.
Ayham S was arrested in January in the small town of Arkel, east of Rotterdam, four years after he requested asylum in the Netherlands, where he was living with his wife and children.
Dutch immigration services were criticised by local media after it emerged that Ayham S had been granted residency in 2019.
His trial comes on the heels of several other high-profile ISIS prosecutions in Europe as the civil war in Syria, where there is little hope that perpetrators of human rights abuses will be brought to justice, drags on.
Ayham S has been charged with membership in ISIS with the aim of committing war crimes.
He has also been charged with membership in former Al Qaeda-affiliated group the Nusra Front with the aim of committing terrorist activities.
In Dutch law, pretrial hearings must take place every three months until a date is set for the trial. Experts and witnesses are questioned privately but may appear in court if requested.
Judges denied a request lodged by Ayham S's lawyers asking that he be freed from pretrial detention.
His legal team argued on Tuesday that evidence put forward by Dutch prosecutors was vague and anecdotal. They claimed that in one case, a witness mistook Ayham S for someone else.
Prosecutors built their case in part on a report submitted in June 2020 by a Paris-based NGO the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).
Based on 11 testimonies, the SCM’s report claims that before joining ISIS sometime between 2014 and 2015, Ayham S was actively involved with the Nusra Front.
In a statement issued following his arrest earlier this year, the SCM said that he was responsible for a “wide range of grave violations, such as murder, kidnapping and torture, whose victims were activists, civilians and opponents of [ISIS]”.
The SCM said it prepared its report after receiving information from activists in southern Damascus. It has not publicly named the defendant.
Ayham S's lawyers were granted access to the report following Tuesday’s hearing.
Prosecutors also conducted their own investigation which included their own interviews of witnesses.
According to Dutch media, at least 10 Syrians have been sentenced by Dutch courts for war crimes perpetrated during the Syrian civil war.
In a similar case from last May, Dutch police arrested a 34-year-old Syrian accused of being a member of militia Liwaa Al Quds, which is affiliated with the regime in Damascus.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The chef's advice
Troy Payne, head chef at Abu Dhabi’s newest healthy eatery Sanderson’s in Al Seef Resort & Spa, says singles need to change their mindset about how they approach the supermarket.
“They feel like they can’t buy one cucumber,” he says. “But I can walk into a shop – I feed two people at home – and I’ll walk into a shop and I buy one cucumber, I’ll buy one onion.”
Mr Payne asks for the sticker to be placed directly on each item, rather than face the temptation of filling one of the two-kilogram capacity plastic bags on offer.
The chef also advises singletons not get too hung up on “organic”, particularly high-priced varieties that have been flown in from far-flung locales. Local produce is often grown sustainably, and far cheaper, he says.
Common OCD symptoms and how they manifest
Checking: the obsession or thoughts focus on some harm coming from things not being as they should, which usually centre around the theme of safety. For example, the obsession is “the building will burn down”, therefore the compulsion is checking that the oven is switched off.
Contamination: the obsession is focused on the presence of germs, dirt or harmful bacteria and how this will impact the person and/or their loved ones. For example, the obsession is “the floor is dirty; me and my family will get sick and die”, the compulsion is repetitive cleaning.
Orderliness: the obsession is a fear of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, or to prevent harm coming to oneself or others. Objectively there appears to be no logical link between the obsession and compulsion. For example,” I won’t feel right if the jars aren’t lined up” or “harm will come to my family if I don’t line up all the jars”, so the compulsion is therefore lining up the jars.
Intrusive thoughts: the intrusive thought is usually highly distressing and repetitive. Common examples may include thoughts of perpetrating violence towards others, harming others, or questions over one’s character or deeds, usually in conflict with the person’s true values. An example would be: “I think I might hurt my family”, which in turn leads to the compulsion of avoiding social gatherings.
Hoarding: the intrusive thought is the overvaluing of objects or possessions, while the compulsion is stashing or hoarding these items and refusing to let them go. For example, “this newspaper may come in useful one day”, therefore, the compulsion is hoarding newspapers instead of discarding them the next day.
Source: Dr Robert Chandler, clinical psychologist at Lighthouse Arabia