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| ON AIR: Moaz al-Khatib in Cairo and Giselle Khoury in Beirut |
President Bashar
al-Assad this week preferred the release by the Free Syrian Army of 48 Iranian
Revolutionary Guards to freedom to 200 of his Alawite kinsmen.
The revelation by Ahmad
Moaz al-Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary Forces, came
in the course of a half-hour live TV interview aired late Thursday night.
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| Ghiyath Matar |
He was speaking from
Cairo to Alarabiya TV’s Beirut anchorwoman Gisele Khoury.
Khatib said the FSA offered
to release the 200 Alawite military in its custody in exchange for 2,000-plus men
and women detained by Assad’s security forces.
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| Abu Firas al-Halabi |
In the end, Assad freed
2,130 of his tens of thousands of
detainees, to win the release of the 48 Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured by
the FSA in Damascus last August.
While the Iranians are now back home, Khatib said the 200 Alawites remain
in custody with the FSA in northern Syria.
In other highlights of the interview, Khatib described Assad’s Sunday speech
at the Opera House in Damascus as a “soliloquy” showing “he wants to talk to no
one but himself.”
Khatib said the National Coalition was compiling evidence and drawing up
a list of 200-to-250 war crimes suspects for the International Criminal Court.
He disputed Assad’s claim that the Syrian revolution had no intellectuals
or leaders, citing the late Ghiyath
Matar (aka Little Gandhi), as one of its foremost thinkers and Muhammad
al-Halabi (aka Abu Firas) as one of its outstanding leaders.
Abu Firas was the FSA commander killed by random shelling hours after
his men stormed the Aleppo Infantry School in mid-December.
Khatib also appealed for donations from Syrians across the globe to help
alleviate the winter hardships descending on Syrian refugees in host countries.
