...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...terror group is no more than 200, sources from the formerly rebel-held bastion said.
Apparently, the Saudi-backed, ultra-conservative militia has been lying about the number of captives they hold in order to ’improve their position’ while negotiating with the Syrian government.
Fake lists which contain thousands of names have been provided by the terror group to the Syrian government, claiming they are all alive in the notorious Tawba prison.
| Mohammed: 27 Mohamad: 14 Mahmoud: 33 Bassam: 4 Belal: 18 |
The same source suggested that hundreds, and maybe thousands, of captives have either executed or died during their years of captivity due to reasons pertaining to illness, hunger or fatigue.