Parents of girl who died fighting in PKK ranks acquitted of terror charges

ANTALYA

The parents of Ayşe Deniz Karacagil, who died in Iraq’s Raqqa after joining the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), have been acquitted of charges of “making terror propaganda” by attending their daughter’s funeral.

The prosecutor had demanded up to three years in jail for Karacagil’s mother, Nuray Erçağan, and her father, Ömer Faruk Karacagil.

They were charged with “praising Karacagil’s activities as a member of a terror organization” and “taking pictures in a place where members and symbols of a terror organization were also present.”

Their lawyer Hakan Evcin said no parents should be punished for attending their daughter’s funeral. Eventually, the Antalya 2nd Heavy Penal Court has recently acquitted Karacagil’s parents of all charges.

Karacagil first became publicly known in Turkey as “the girl with the red foulard” during the Gezi protests in summer 2013, spending four months in custody after police and prosecutors linked the color of her scarf to socialism during her interrogations.

A year later, she joined the PKK, adopting the name “Destan Yörük” as her alias.

In 2017, she died near Raqqa fighting in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) ranks, a group that Turkey sees as a terror group for its ties to the PKK.</s>The reports specified that the contingent of troops were previously stationed in northwestern parts of the Raqqa Governorate, not the provincial capital, and are now positioned in the border city of Ras al-Ayn in al-Hasakah province.

Soldiers from the French Army entered the city of Manbij – which has been identified as a future target for Turkey’s cross-border military operation in Syria – and the border town of Tell Abyad, on April 3, after US troops withdrew to other SDF-controlled parts of the country.

READ MORE: French Soldiers Enter Parts of Northern Syria as US Troops Withdraw — Reports

The rotation of US forces with French troops offers a likely explanation to US President Donald Trump’s comments about leaving Syria “to let others take care of it,” though this is yet to be confirmed by anyone in his administration.

The Syrian government has repeatedly condemned Turkey’s offensive on its soil as a breach of its sovereignty.

Turkey considers the SDF to have ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – which has long been designated a terror organization by the EU, the US, and Turkey – and believes the group’s presence near its southern border poses a national security threat.</s>A senior U.N. official reports a U.N. assessment mission to Raqqa in northern Syria has found a devastated city, littered with unexploded weapons and largely uninhabitable.

The mission, in which 25 experts from key U.N. agencies participated this week, was the first such trip to Raqqa since the four-month battle to retake the Syrian city from Islamic State militants ended in mid-October.

The special adviser to the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Jan Egeland, said the experts witnessed utter devastation, far worse than they had seen after the brutal battles at Aleppo and Homs.

"A particular area of concern is the unexploded bombs, grenades and explosive traps — the latter left behind by the Islamic State fighters and the former by this enormous military campaign to take or liberate Raqqa," Egeland said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces backed by the United States, launched its campaign to drive IS militants out of Raqqa on June 6.

Egeland said U.N. experts found that nearly 70 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged, and that water, electricity and health care were severely limited. He said one private hospital was functioning and some schools had resumed but lacked school materials.

He said some of the roads and streets had been cleared of unexploded ordnance, but nothing has been done to remove these dangerous arms from homes or backyards.

"So, people returning are taking a too large a risk still," Egeland said. "And it just shows the fierceness of this battle, and again the question was: Was it necessary to totally destroy a city to liberate it?"

Egeland said about 100,000 people already have returned to Raqqa and more than 100,000 others reportedly want to go back. He said it is incredible to think of so many people living in a city with no available public services.</s>The Syrian army on June 13 claimed sudden advances along the western edge of Raqqa. This comes as Islamic State fighters are reportedly retreating from Raqqa amid the US-backed Syrian Defense Forces battle to re-capture the city.This footage, released by a Hezbollah-affiliated and pro-government media channel, claims to show regime forces fighting the Islamic State in west Raqqa. The media channel also reported the regime has re-taken the neighborhoods of Rajm Askar, Bir Inbaj, Zahar Um Baj, Jab Aziz, Jab al-Ghanem, Abu Sousa and Jab Abyad. Storyful cannot independently verify this claim.Reuters reported: “The area between Ithriya and Tabqa, west of Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital Raqqa, is important for the army since it can be used to attack government-held towns and supply routes.” Credit: War Media Room via Storyful</s>RAQQA, Syria (Reuters) - U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) raised a militia flag inside Raqqa stadium on Tuesday, one of the last remaining areas that were held by Islamic State in its former capital, a Reuters witness said.

The flag of the Kurdish YPG, the strongest of the militias in the SDF, was planted in the middle of the stadium, where fighting had ended, but which had not been fully cleared of landmines, militia fighters told the witness. 

 

 (Reporting By John Davison in Raqqa; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; editing by John Stonestreet)</s>Six months after Kurdish forces backed by U.S. air power and artillery recaptured Raqqa from Islamic State militants, the nearly destroyed former capital of the self-declared caliphate in Syria remains without the most basic services, according to a recent assessment by a team on UN experts.

A four-hour visit to the once-vibrant metropolis on the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria by a team of UN experts has provided a rare glimpse into the life in Raqqa as the city struggles to begin rebuilding after the five-months bloody siege and four years of ISIS rule.

A 25-member United Nations interagency team led by the World Food Programme (WFP) was allowed to visit the Raqqa on April 1, becoming the first UN team to visit the city since ISIS took control of it in 2013.

“We found the city, unfortunately, nearly completely destroyed,” said Marwa Awad, a Canadian, who works as the WFP spokesperson in Syria. “Almost all of it has been destroyed, the destruction is spread out across the northeast, south and west of the city.”

The city’s infrastructure has been completely destroyed, Awad said.

“There is no electricity, there is no water, people are buying water in tankers and the water is not clean according to the families we had a chance to speak to during our short assessment mission,” Awad said. “There is also no phone coverage.”

According to Airwars, a UK-based group of investigative journalists and volunteers that tracks the number of civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition launched more than 20,000 munitions into the city during the five-month campaign to recapture it from ISIS.

In August of 2017, that barrage had officially increased to more than one bomb, missile, rocket or artillery round fired every eight minutes—a total of 5,775 munitions during the month, Airwars said in its report Raqqa: a city destroyed and then forgotten.

This was more than all munitions released by the U.S. in Afghanistan during all of 2017, Airwars said.

Airwars estimated that 2,000 civilians were killed during bitter fighting for control of Raqqa.
• Civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria mount amid intensifying Western and Russian air campaign

Hundreds more have been killed and maimed by mines and booby traps laid by ISIS fighters or by unexploded ordinance as nearly 100,000 civilians have returned to the city to try to rebuild their lives.

“There is a lot of discontent among the returnees because basic services are not there yet and it’s going to take a long time for the city to get back up on its feet again,” Awad said.

The reconstruction of Raqqa will be a “colossal job,” she said.

“The destruction is not concentrated in a few neighbourhoods but it’s spread-out, which makes it more difficult than in other cities that we’ve seen, for example in Deir ez-Zor there was an area where you had a concentration of heavy fighting and destruction but you had two or three neighbourhoods that were more or less intact, and infrastructure in Deir ez-Zor was available and was existing even though it was bad,” Awad said. “But in Raqqa it’s even worse than that.”
• UN calls for better humanitarian access in Syria

On the other hand, food prices in the area that was once Syria’s breadbasket are comparable to other areas because trade routes from Damascus, Aleppo and Hassakeh bringing food from Iran and Turkey are now functioning, Awad said.

“However, unemployment is close to a 100 per cent, a lot of people don’t have jobs except maybe for traders who have access and are able to open up shop or fix the damaged infrastructure that belonged to them,” Awad said. “We’re looking at a situation where there are goods on the market but people can’t afford it and those who can afford it are very few compared to have-nots in the city.”

More than half of the people the UN team talked to said they were buying on credit, she said.

“They are literally just borrowing or going to the market, saying, ‘I need x amount of eggs or x amount of produce and I’ll pay you back when I can,’” Awad said.

The WFP plans to truck in food assistance for 30,000 people every month to alleviate food insecurity in the region, she said.</s>According to Egeland, the United Nations sent an assessment mission to Raqqa which was carried out on April 1 with 25 UN experts.

"They report that perhaps now 100,000 people have come back to live in Raqqa city," Egeland said, calling conditions in Raqqa a "devastation."

READ MORE: No to 'Occupation Forces': WATCH Militia in Raqqa Allegedly Shell US Base

He went on saying that the United Nations does not have any reports on any recent fighting or air raids in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta following years of "besiegement and suffering."

"Hopefully the battle is over now in the heavily-populated area of Eastern Ghouta. After many years of besiegement and suffering, we have no reports of recent fighting, no reports of recent air raids," Egeland told a briefing.

In late 2016, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the support of the US-led coalition, started an operation aimed at freeing the city from the militants' grasp. In October 2017, the SDF announced the full liberation of the city, which was later confirmed by the US-led coalition.</s>Local residents have been expressing their discontent with the policy conducted in Raqqa by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US coalition-appointed authorities. They took their protest to the streets on March 27 andThe press service of the Popular Resistance of Raqqa (PRoR) announced earlier today that it had, where he 93rd Brigade was deployed. PRoR also claimed that it will not tolerate "the occupation forces" on the Syrian territory,The Telegram channel Directorate 4, which monitors the situation in Syria and Iraq, posted an alleged video of the shelling on its YouTube channel. According to it, this was the first operation conducted by the group. The channel cites PRoR, who announcedThe first reports of PRoR appeared early in March, saying that they covertly recruit locals, who are opposed to the US appointed government's policies and the US-backed SDF. News about a full scale uprising in Raqqa appeared on March 30, allegedly due to the inability of the appointed government to deal with the humanitarian situation in the city and the forced mobilization. So far, no other information on the group's activity has been reported.Raqqa had been under Daesh* control for four years since 2013 and was considered its headquarters. The SDF and the US-led coalition launched a campaign against the terrorist group in the city on June 2017 and declared it "clear" in October.According to UN investigators, massive airstrikes conducted during this campaign resulted in numerous civilian casualties. The US coalition claims that it has found no evidence of this. Damascus considers Raqqa occupied, as the US operates on Syria's territory without its authorization or a UN mandate.Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organization banned in Russia
The parents of Ayşe Deniz Karacagil, killed in Raqqa, Syria, after she joined the Kurdistan Workers' Party, are acquitted of a terrorism propaganda charge for attending her funeral.