Relatives Identify Lebanese Pilgrims Kidnappers on TV
The wives and daughters of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped in northern Syria identified two of the kidnappers on Tuesday after seeing them in a report about the Free Syrian Army on television.
LBCI 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 is 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?"
A previously unknown armed group calling itself the "Syrian Revolutionaries -- Aleppo Countryside" said last week it was holding a group of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims who went missing.
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet
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