A local human rights organization called for adding the Assad forces and security agencies to the list of a terrorist groups in response to the war crimes they are committing against Syrian civilians. It stressed that Assad’s forces are no different from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps which the US has recently designated as a terrorist organization.
The Association of Syrian Lawyers on Friday issued a memo calling for designating the Assad regime’s Republican Guard, the Fourth Armored Division, the intelligence and security agencies and branches, the Chemical Warfare Department as well as the PYD militia as terrorist organizations.
The memo indicated that the standards the US adopted in the designation of state sponsors of terrorism apply to the Assad regime’s Republican Guard, the Fourth Armored Division, the Military Security Division, the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, the State Security, the Political Security Branch, the National Security Office, the Chemical Warfare Department, the Scientific Studies and Research Center, and the PYD militia.
The Assad and Iranian regimes are major sponsors of terrorism as they have been involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks against Arab and foreign interests in the Middle East and beyond, the memo added. It also said that those regimes are funding the Hezbollah militia and other sectarian terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.
The memo went on to say that the Assad regime’s Republican Guard, the Fourth Armored Division and the Syrian intelligence services are a state within a state as they committed the worst war crimes against the Syrian people with the help of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Hezbollah militia.
It stressed these crimes violated all human rights convention and laws, and affected Syrians across all the Syrian territory.
The memo also highlighted the PYD militia’s ongoing crimes against the Syrian people, including ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass forced displacement and demographic change. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
