Propaganda Mainstream in Syria

by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio

“What precedent is there for the funeral ceremony of a former ISIS member, current jihadist, commander of a Salafist organization that entered the public radar with his comments” exterminating the Alevites “? Why was such a show tolerated? Why did the Salafis allow this demonstration of strength?

With these words, Turkish MP Tülay Hatimoğulları, a leading member of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), held a press conference in Parliament on mass funerals for ISIS member Abdulbasit al-Sarut, held in the Reyhanli district of Hatay province , a few kilometers from Syria, where the militiaman was mortally wounded in clashes against the SAA government army.

His story is dramatic and bloody: it is that of a young footballer who lets himself be overwhelmed by the youthful impulses of a violent rebellion against society up to religious fanaticism. As a charismatic leader of the hordes of young people driven by US-financed propaganda to the armed commander, the pace is short.

The jihad against Shiites and Christians is the mouth of hatred cultivated in radical Sunni and Salafi extremism … The ferocity of a mad holy war, well-liked in the chessboard of the powerful and the arms lobbies, will lead it to a tremendous metamorphosis not only in the heart but in his own boy’s face …

JIHADISTA ANTI-CHRISTIANS CELEBRATED BY REPUBLIC AND EVENT

While the parliamentarian pointed the finger at the Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu for a presence at the funeral ceremony organized with buses from the rest of Turkey and from Syria, in Italy and in other western countries Sarout was celebrated as a hero of the resistance for having fought alongside the FSA rebels against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

“The goalkeeper and singer of the revolt died in battle”, the Italian Republic titled on 8 June. A memo to the anti-Assad goalkeeper was also dedicated by the daily Avvenire, a newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference, which a few hours later removed the article probably after having discovered with guilty delay that the former football player of the Syrian youth team was shouting for Jihad against the Christians after having played in a group near the Islamic State and in another affiliate of Al Qaeda.

Sarout’s story is the epiphenomenon of mainstream propaganda against Syria. Those who dig into his story discover that he was a fierce Sunni militiaman with an impossible dream: to create a dialogue between Isis and Al Nusra, the Syrian liberation front emanating from Al Qaeda, now reborn with the new battle name of Hayy’at Tahrir -Sham (HTS).

The pro-American Western media servants of the Atlantic Alliance precisely around its very popular character among young people for its successful sporting commitment have built the image of the “hard and pure” fighter for freedom. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, there is also the suspicion that Sarut has been recruited by US intelligence to make it an erector of anti-Assad resistance. And as such it has been painted by many journalists despite its crimes in the name of radical Islamic extremism.

Al-Sarout was immortalized in the 2013 war documentary by Talal Derki, The Return to Homs. The film won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Special Jury Recognition of the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival and it was defined by Al Jazeera, a Qatari broadcaster governed by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, as an icon of the revolt and guardian of the revolution.

Even before telling the story of this convinced Sunni jihadist we leave his own words to describe it. It is an interview released in 2014 before the occupation of Homs, his city, and his escape. More than a conversation with a reporter it is a free rein at times even violent, posted on the social Twitter Syrian war expert Walid in 2017 and translated into English.

SAROUT IN THE MESSAGE TO ISIS AND AL QAEDA: “FIGHTING CHRISTIANS, NOT BETWEEN US”

“Our accusation against the Islamic State and Jabhat al Nusra is made with love. Because we know that these two groups are not politicized and have the same goals with which we work for God and care about Islam and Muslims – Sarout would have said – Unfortunately some of them considered us as kafers (apostates) and drug addicts, but to God willing we will work with them side by side when we leave here (Homs): we are not Christians or Shiites to be frightened by suicides or car bombs.

We consider these things as strength in us and, God willing, it will be just like that. This message is for the Islamic State and our brothers of Jabhat Al Nusra when we leave Homs we will all be a hand to fight Christians and not to fight among ourselves.

We have not yet had the opportunity to find an Arab expert who confirms the authenticity of the translation. But other images of the former footballer are enough to make his affiliation unequivocal in jihadist groups.

What was painted by the “partisans” of the Republic as the singer of the revolt in another video intones the triumphal song of Al Qaeda on the attacks of 11 September 2001. In a documentary of 2012 appears armed while flaunting the black flag of Isis.

Abdul Baset al-Sarout on his death, which occurred on 8 June in a Turkish hospital due to injuries sustained in a bombing in Hama, was celebrated on social media by a solemn epitaph by the Saudi Salafi imam Abdullah al-Muhaysini, implicated with the Turkistan Islamic Party and founder of Hayy’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the most important terrorist group in the jihadist stronghold of the Syrian province of Idlib , financed and armed by Turkey and supported by the US and by Al Qaeda in a connection now more and more frequent in the Middle East where the American and Turkish attacks against alleged jihadists only serve to throw smoke in the eyes of world governments .

It is legitimizing the Islamic State project that includes the Levant region. This is unacceptable “.

FROM NATIONAL FOOTBALLER TO JIHADISTA WITH ISIS AND AL QAEDA

Abdel Based was born on 2 January 1992 in Homs where he grew up in the serene atmosphere of Syria prior to the Arab Spring. He has a great passion for football that makes him famous in a hurry as a goalkeeper for the Under 17 National team from 2007 to 2008, for the Under 20 team from 2009 to 2010, playing in the ranks of the Al-Karamah Sporting Club, one of the oldest and most professional teams.

Asian forts: able to win 8 championships, 5 Syria Cups and even reach the final in the Asian Champions League in 2006. Sarout has a promising future as a football player but in those years the US president George Bush junior began to finance regime change in the Arab Republic and the history of the country is tinged with blood.

To give popularity to the now-former footballer is a gesture celebrated by the Reuters agency on December 4, 2011, in the repeated anti-Assad propaganda that caused the Civil War and almost half a million deaths:

“In the Sunni district of Homs by Bab Amro Sunday, several thousand people surrounded the coffin of Khaled al-Sheikh, a 19-year-old protester who reported that he was killed in an army shootout in the neighborhood this week. Abdelbassel Sarout, a 21-year-old footballer, kissed Sheikh’s bloody head as the mostly young crowd of men and women sang to the beat of the drums: “Sleep quietly we’ll continue the fight … mothers cry for the youth of Syria “.

The war has begun and the FSA revolutionaries (Free Syrian Army or ESL in Arabic) ally with the jihadists. During the siege of Homs from 2011 to 2014, Sarout became commander of the Martyrs Brigade Shuhada al-Bayada, a group close to ISIS, in conflict with al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front. For this reason, the young militiaman is targeted several times and survives three attempts at murder, in one of which 50 fighters were killed in his unit.

In 2014 he is among those who are evacuated from Homs due to an agreement between the Syrian government army aimed at ending the conflict in the city, completely freed only in 2017. And it is at that moment that is celebrating a collaboration between ISIS and Qaedist formations, unaware that these instruments of terror function in geopolitical power plays of great powers such as the USA and Saudi Arabia.

PROCESSED AND IMPROVED FOR TIES WITH ISIS

In 2015, Al Nusra began the persecution against Sarout because in the judgment of Al Qaeda affiliates he would have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al-Sarout denied the request but admitted that he had considered joining the ISIL, as he began to consider the jihadist group as the only force capable of fighting the Syrian government. He declared that he had not joined the group of militants, but also refused to fight it.

But in April 2016 the Sharia Supreme Court in the province of Homs thinks it differently in the review of case no. 246/2016 for which the accusation against the accused Abdul Baset al-Sarout hangs: “The commander of the rebel group of Shuhada al-Bayada joins the ranks of the Islamic State and commits crimes in favor of Isis”. Hence the invitation to surrender in order to avoid punishment in absentia. He does not give up but there is no news of the proceeding that probably saw him condemned like so many other jihadist terrorists.

This brings us to May 29, 2017, when the commander colluding with Daesh is arrested by Tahrir al-Sham, the new formation of Al Nusra-Al Qaeda, after being accused of participating in an anti-HTS protest in Maarat al-Nu ‘man, in the Governorate of Idlib, where the Fsa rebels have taken refuge along with allied but rival jihadists.

But his imprisonment raises fierce protests among Muslim fighters themselves: “We, along with Abdul Baset al-Sarout, support Islamic law and do not disagree with it. But we want Sheikh al-Joulani and Sheikh Abu Jaber (head of Hayy’at Tahrir al-Sham) to release Abdul Baset al-Sarout immediately. People have rebelled and if they stay in prison we don’t know what will happen. ” In order to avoid insurrections the population is satisfied and the young commander then only 25 years old is released on June 24 and the charges against him withdrawn.

FIND THE DEATH WITH HAMA

Thus began his work as field commander of the Jaysh al-Izza group, allied to the fundamentalist militia Islamic Party of Turkmenistan and to the same Tharir al Sham. The actions of the new extremist terrorist organization are not very different from those of ISIS as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) which monitored an execution in the northern sector of the Hama campaign, against a resident of Kafr Zita.

“Jaysh al-Izza arrested him and interrogated him until he confessed to killing another person in the Wadi al-Anaz area in al-Lataminah – SOHR wrote November 23, 2018 – According to reliable sources he was thrown into a well, at the Jaysh al-Izza headquarters near the town of Khan Shaykhun in the southern Idlib countryside “. This would be the first execution since the Qaedist training instituted a court that receives complaints from the citizens.

But the activities of the Sarout militia group focus mainly on attacks on villages as reported by the counter-information site Prohibited to Speak:

“Weapons provided to Jaysh al-Izza, including Grad rockets, as well as anti-tank guided missiles (Fagot and TOW) from the United States, were used to support various military operations of HTS and sold in part to the latter. Some have even been used in attacks on civilians. Last month, the group’s Grad rockets killed four children in the (predominantly Christian) city of Al-Suqaylabiyah , in government territory, in northern Hama ».

And it was in that city that was the scene of daily bloodshed due to attempts by the various jihadist groups supported by Turkey to reconquer, such as Afrin against the Kurds, that the former footballer was seriously wounded mortally in a fight against the regular army. Abdel Based at only 27 years old.

For the Sunni Salafis, a martyr to the Jihad. For the record without blinkers only a bloodthirsty extremist Islamist fighter against Christian and Shiite infidels. For the future story one of the many victims indoctrinated by the propaganda of religious fanaticism in the war strategies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America and Israel for control of the Middle East.

Fabio G. C. Carisio

Fabio is Director and Editor of Gospa News; a Christian Information Journal.

Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio, born on 24/2/1967 in Borgosesia, started working as a reporter when he was only 19 years old in the alpine area of Valsesia, Piedmont, his birth region in Italy. After studying literature and history at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, he became director of the local newspaper Notizia Oggi Vercelli and specialized in judicial reporting.

For about 15 years he is a correspondent from Northern Italy for the Italian newspapers Libero and Il Giornale, also writing important revelations on the Ustica massacre, a report on Freemasonry and organized crime.

With independent investigations, he collaborates with Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza in important investigations that conclude with the arrest of Camorra entrepreneurs or corrupt politicians.

In July 2018 he found the counter-information web media Gospa News focused on geopolitics, terrorism, Middle East, and military intelligence.

His articles were published on many international media and website as SouthFront, Reseau International, Sputnik Italia, United Nation Association Westminster, Global Research, Kolozeg and more…

His investigations was quoted also by The Gateway Pundit, Tasnim and others

He worked for many years for the magazine Art & Wine as an art critic and curator.

www.gospanews.net/