Terrorist Commanders Escaping from Syria to Turkey with Hefty Amount of Money

The Arabic-language al-Arabi al-Jadid website reported that a large number of terrorist commanders have left behind their forces in Syria’s battlefields and escaped to Turkey with a large amount of money.

It added that Ahmad al-Madani nom de guerre Abu Saleh, the founder of Badr Battalion – that was one of the first terrorist establishments in al-Qaboun region in Damascus province – left the battlefield on the second day of clashes in 2012 on the pretext of procuring arms and ammunition.

The website went on to say that Abu Saleh moved from al-Qaboun to Qalamoun and later to the town of Arbin, adding that Abu Saleh ultimately left Syria for Turkey via al-Atibeh region and did not come back to Syria again.

Al-Arabi al-Jadid further said that Abu Saleh sold the entire weapons and ammunitions to the militant groups in the town of Bab al-Hawa in Idlib and earned over 100mln lira, adding that one of costumers of Abu Saleh’s weapons was Jamal, the commander of Syria’s Thowar Front.

Abu Saleh later set up a large supper market in Mustafa Pasha in Bourseh province in Turkey and now his living in al-Fateh neighborhood in the European part of Istanbul city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) announced in late October that a large number of senior commanders of the ISIL terrorist group fled the battlefield and escaped to Turkey.

“According to documents and proofs, a number of Syrian and non-Syrian ISIL commanders have escaped to Turkey in recent days and weeks,” the SOHR wrote on its website.

SOHR further added that ISIL commanders were evacuated from battlefields in Raqqa and Deir Ezzur provinces to the regions that were under the control of the Euphrates Shield Operation in Northern and Northeastern Aleppo that border Turkey.

“ISIL commanders have paid $20,000 up to 30,000 dollars each to leave the provinces of Homs, Deir Ezzur and Raqqa for Turkey via the regions that are under the control of Ankara-backed militants,” the SOHR said, adding that the human traffickers moved the ISIL commanders to the borders with Turkey via checkpoints in Northeastern Aleppo, handing them over to Turkish traffickers.

Hundreds of ISIL members, including the local commanders of the group, escaped to Hasaka province, SOHR said, adding that some of these commanders were hidden in Hasaka and some of them moved to Turkey.

The SOHR said that according to documents, ISIL’s members and commanders that left Eastern Homs to the regions that were under the control of the Euphrates Shield Operation in Northeastern Aleppo were taken to Turkey by human traffickers.

Local sources said that Khaled Ali’owi nom de guerre Abu al-Walid Hosseiniyeh and Samir al-Dayeri, two notorious commanders of the ISIL, escaped from the Eastern countryside of Deir Ezzur city as the army men were rolling on the terrorists’ positions.