Dutch authorities on Tuesday arrested a Syrian man suspected of being head of security for Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra extremist groups during Syria’s bitter civil war, prosecutors said.
“It is suspected that from his position in ISIL he also contributed to the war crimes that the organization committed in Syria,” the National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The 37-year-old man, whose name was not released, was detained in the small town of Arkel, about 30 miles east of the port city of Rotterdam, prosecutors said in a statement.
COCAINE CONTINUES TO SPREAD ACROSS EUROPE AT AN ALARM RATE
A traffic sign indicating the entrance to the village of Arkel, in the southwestern Netherlands, on January 17, 2023, where Dutch police have arrested a suspected security officer from the Islamic State group suspected of having links to crimes. of war in Syria, prosecutors said.
(Photo by Jeffrey Groeneweg/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The man is suspected of having held “a management position in the ISIS security service” between 2015 and 2018, prosecutors said. During the previous two years, he allegedly performed the same job for Jabhat al-Nusra. Prosecutors say he served in both roles “in and around the Yarmouk refugee camp” south of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
The suspect applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2019 and later settled in Arkel, prosecutors said. He was scheduled to appear before a coroner in The Hague on February 20.
It was not the first time that the Dutch authorities arrested a suspect in the Syrian conflict. Last year, a Dutch court convicted two Syrian brothers for holding senior positions in Jabhat al-Nusra between 2011 and 2014.
