WORLD_ Islamic State group frees 19 Syrian Christians after ransom is paid: activists

THE JAPAN TIMES

Photo: Assyrians hold banners as they march Sunday in Beirut in solidarity with the Assyrians abducted by Islamic State fighters in Syria lasts week. Militants in northeast Syria are now estim. The banner at right reads, 'We are not afraid of whom kills the flesh, we are not afraid of who destroys the stone. Assyrians and victorious.' Islamic State captors have apparently freed 19 of their Christian hostaages after ransoms were paid. | REUTERS

World

Islamic State group frees 19 Syrian Christians after ransom is paid: activists

AFP-JIJI
Mar 2, 2015
Article history

BEIRUT – Islamic State group jihadis on Sunday freed 19 of the 220 Assyrian Christians they took hostage in Syria last week, after a ransom was paid for their release, activists said.

“Nineteen Assyrian hostages arrived on Sunday at the Church of Our Lady in Hassakeh after they were released by IS,” said Osama Edward, the director of the Assyrian Network for Human Rights.

“They arrived on two buses from Shaddadeh,” the Islamic State stronghold in the northeastern province of Hasakeh where they had been detained, he told AFP.

Edward said an Islamic State religious court decided on Saturday to release the Christians in exchange for a sum of money for each family that Islamic State considers as jizya, or tax, paid by non-Muslims.

He was unable to say how much was paid but recalled that in November Islamic State released Assyrians after receiving payments of $1,700 per person.

The activist said negotiations for the release of all hostages began on Saturday between Assyrian officials and Arab Muslim tribal chiefs.

Last week, Islamic State kidnapped 220 Assyrians in the Tal Tamr area where the extremist Islamist group has seized control of 10 Christian villages, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Almost 5,000 people have since fled to Kurdish- and government-controlled areas.

Before Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, there were 30,000 Assyrians in the country, among an estimated Christian population of about 1.2 million.

The Assyrians, from one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, have faced an increasing threat since Islamic State captured large parts of Syria.

U.N. peace envoy Staffan de Mistura paid a surprise visit on Sunday to a church near the Syrian capital in a show of solidarity with the war-torn country’s Christian minority targeted by jihadis.

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