The wives and daughters of
Lebanese Shia kidnapped in northern Syria identified two of the kidnappers on
Tuesday after seeing them in a television report about the Free Syrian Army on
television.
The Lebanese Broadcasting
Corp reported that several women, part of a group of pilgrims kidnapped in
Syria and released without their male relatives, contacted it after seeing
their kidnappers faces on a Monday broadcast.
The report featured men who
identified themselves as members of the FSA.
LBC said the women had
claimed that "the men on the broadcast were the ones who kidnapped their
men."
The women appeared on the
channel Tuesday evening to confirm what they had said.
One of them identified the
gunmen from the previous night's report, saying "this man went with us to
the bus," and pointing out another man who was "carrying rocket
launchers on his shoulder and blocked the road" for the bus.
"They told us when we
boarded the bus: 'We are the Free [Syrian] Army. We do not want to hurt anyone.
Some of our men are being held by the Syrian army and we want to exchange them
for your men.'"
The kidnappers released the
women and elderly men and kept 11 men in their custody.
The whereabouts and fate of
those kidnapped was still unclear.
"When we said that the
Free Syrian Army carried out the kidnapping it was denied. They cannot deny
anymore. This video broadcast is the proof," the woman said.
"We hold the Free
Syrian Army in Turkey and Syria responsible for the security of young
people," she added.
"May God Almighty
expose them [...] They have to release them immediately." The FSA has
denied any involvement in the kidnapping that took place shortly after the
pilgrims' bus cross the Turkish border into Syrian territory in the northern
province of Aleppo.
"How could the
kidnappers appear to the public and reveal themselves? Was it an intentional
error," the woman asked.
Referring to the presence
of the FSA members on Turkish soil, she demanded: "What is the
responsibility of the Turkish
state in this matter?"
state in this matter?"
The families of the
abducted Lebanese Shia pilgrims warned earlier in the day that they would target the Free
Syrian Army and any of its supporters both in Syria and Lebanon.
A previously unknown armed
group calling itself the "Syrian Revolutionaries -- Aleppo Province"
said last week it was holding a group of Lebanese Shia pilgrims who went
missing.
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