Anonymous ID: 8b4a70 April 8, 2018, 5:48 p.m. No.958854   🗄️.is đź”—kun

>>958613

different entrance but

i'm fucking telling you

 

read this

Hostages, McCain, and Amouri

 

During the struggle for Menagh, the NSB was also dealing with three separate issues that, according to its members, would profoundly affect the future of the organization. The first stemmed back to an incident that had occurred on May 22, 2012. A bus full of Lebanese citizens had been making their way home from a Shi’a pilgrimage in Iran when they were stopped by the NSB at a checkpoint outside of Azaz. In an interview with NPR, Dadikhi claimed the men in the group introduced themselves as military experts from Hezbollah, believing he and his troops to be government soldiers. The NSB would hold 11 of the men captive, setting off a hostage crisis that would last 17 months.

 

Dadikhi’s claims were vehemently denied by both the hostages and their families, and were met with intense speculation in the media. Yet the debate within the NSB and other rebel groups was not over the identity of the prisoners – of that they were certain. Rather, it was over what they should be exchanged for. For Dadikhi and many of his followers, they hoped to barter for the release of activists held by the Assad regime. Yet this was hardly unanimous. Liwa al-Tawhid, a moderate Islamist group that enjoyed a friendly relationship with the NSB, pushed Dadikhi to return the hostages only in exchange for a significant supply of weapons. According to one source, this became a mild dispute between Abdul Qader Saleh, Liwa al-Tawhid’s leader, and the NSB.

 

On May 27, 2013, with the hostages still being held and negotiations largely stalled, a visit from US Senator John McCain would again push the NSB into the spotlight. McCain traveled to Azaz with General Salim Idriss, then the commander of SMC, to meet with a contingent of FSA leaders from across Syria. Among these groups was the NSB, and McCain drew considerable criticism for allegedly crossing paths with Dadikhi and Muhammad Nour, another member of the brigade that was directly involved in the kidnappings. Despite the fact that at this point Dadikhi had been killed and the connection to Nour was later refuted, the speculation still sullied McCain’s visit and made his push for further funding of the FSA ring hollow.

 

https:// www.juancole.com/2014/03/northern-brigade-matters.html