Dutch police looking for witnesses of ISIS beheadings in Syria

Police in the Netherlands are looking for witnesses to help connect at least a dozen beheadings in Syria a decade ago to a suspected terrorist arrested in Zuid-Holland. The suspect, nicknamed Abu Khaled al Amni, applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2019.

The police arrested the then 37-year-old man in Arkel in January 2023. He is still in custody. When he was arrested, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) accused of being a high-ranking member of both Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. He was believed to be in a top position in the security services of both terrorist organizations at various points, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced.

“It is suspected that from his position at IS, he also contributed to war crimes that the organization committed in Syria,” the OM said more than a year ago. This occurred between 2013 and 2018 during the civil war in that country, which began two years earlier and is still ongoing.

The police are looking for witnesses of beheadings and torture by the terrorist organization Islamic State in the Syrian city of Damascus between September 2013 and the end of 2014. The police are investigating a Syrian man who applied for asylum in the Netherlands for involvement in these war crimes.

Investigators now believe that Abu Khaled al Amni was involved in the beheading of at least 12 people at a power plant in Yalda in mid-January 2014. Before at least two executions, victims were interrogated and tortured. The police think Abu Khaled al Amni was involved in that, too.

Many people fled from Syria in the past decade, and the police think that potential witnesses may now live in the Netherlands. The police hope that they can help link the suspect to war crimes in Damascus’s southern neighborhoods of Yalda and Al-Hajar al-Aswad.

The police’s international crime team would like to speak to any witnesses of these war crimes. “There is particular interest in people who saw the victims being held in an IS prison or who saw who was involved in their execution. Please contact us,” the police said.