Imprisoned Daesh terrorists in Syria escape from prison

Daesh terrorists rioted in the prison located in the city of Al-Hasaka, northeast Syria, and several of them managed to escape from their confinement after destroying part of the prison facilities, according to sources from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish group that controls the prison and is supported by the United States. 

The escape took place on Sunday after the riot in Qaviran prison, located in Al-Hasaka, the largest of the existing prisons hosting Daesh jihadists, with up to 3,000 from 54 different countries refusing to receive this type of prisoners. 

Syria's official news agency SANA reported on the matter, but did not detail the number of fugitives who had escaped. For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an organisation that opposes the official regime of Bachar al-Asad and is located in the United Kingdom, which has an extensive network of informers in Syria, spoke of at least four escapees. 

Mustafa Bali, director of communication of the FSD, indicated that “the terrorists of Daesh completely took over the ground floor of Al-Hasaka prison, demolished the inner walls and destroyed the doors”. “Some managed to escape and are being sought,” Bali explained on the social network Twitter, adding that “the situation is tense” inside the prison.

The spokesman for the FSD, a Kurdish-led alliance that controls northeast Syria, said “anti-terrorist forces” are trying to control the situation on the first floor of the facility to quell the riots. 

SANA, linked to the Al-Asad government, also pointed out that international coalition planes flying the US flag over the area to detect insurgents. According to the news agency, there are about 3,000 Daesh affiliates in Al-Hasaka prison, a number that OSDH puts at 5,000 individuals of various nationalities. 

The Kurds are holding thousands of Daesh members who were captured during months of fighting in which the Jihadist organisation was gaining ground in Syria in different detention centres. Up to seven prisons control the Kurds in the north of Syrian territory, where they are holding some 12,000 extremists. 

The Kurdish militias also keep tens of thousands of relatives of Daesh's fighters in camps such as Al-Hol, also located in Al-Hasaka, where they have been confining Daesh's evacuees during the offensive since 2015.

In 2017, the FSD captured Al-Raqa, a city that has been the centre of operations for the jihadists since 2014, and they were gradually regaining ground until the defeat of the terrorists a year ago. 

The last resistant bastion of the insurgents is located in Idlib, an enclave located in the northwest of Syria that continues to be surrounded by Al-Asad's army, which is supported by its main ally in this conflict, Vladimir Putin's Russia. 

For several months, Turkey has been opposing this coalition, which entered the neighbouring Syrian territory to harass the Kurdish-Syrian forces of the People's Protection Units (YPG) within the campaign of persecution it is carrying out against the Kurdish ethnic group, which it accuses of terrorist activity in the south of the Ottoman nation. 

Russia made an approach to the YPG, which were key in the fight led by the United States that ended the Jihadist terrorists and were abandoned to their fate by Donald Trump's American government when it decided to withdraw its troops from Syria, leaving the way open for Turkey to pursue the Kurds and Russian troops to occupy the space left. 

After the American departure, a pact was reached at the end of last year between Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, and the US State and Department of Defence establishing a security zone on the Turkish-Syrian border, from which the Kurds were to leave by Ottoman demand in order to end hostilities in the region. 

As a result, a security zone was established on the border between Turkey and Syria, 32 kilometers wide and 240 long; an area whose creation was given the green light by the Trump Administration with its withdrawal of troops from the territory, and which implied the departure of the Kurdish-Syrian forces from the YPG and the search for the relocation of more than three million Syrian refugees stationed on Turkish soil. 

Subsequently, last February, Erdogan urged Al-Asad to withdraw soldiers from Idlib, but the diplomatic contacts between Ankara and Syria's ally Moscow had no effect, thereby demonstrating Putin's firm support for the official Syrian regime.