Doha (AsiaNews /
Agencies) - A Christian will be the new leader of the Syrian National Council
(SNC), dominated by Islamists. The
election was announced last night at the end of the meeting the major
opposition group to the Assad regime this week in Doha (Qatar).
Former
communist and opponent of the Syrian regime since the time of Hafez al-Assad,
father of Bashar, George Sabra was one of the first founders of the SNC. He has spent several years in the prisons of
the regime and has been living in exile in Turkey for
months. He
said his election as "an example of the pluralism within the
opposition", considered by many to be a "hotbed" of Islamists. In
a press conference he called on foreign countries to stop the extermination of
the Syrian people, by sending more weapons in support of the opposition. "We
need to stop this trail of blood - he said - and support the cause of the
Syrian people."
Wanted
by the United States, Europe and the Arab League, the meeting of the Syrian
National Council was organized to create a united front of political opposition
to the regime, able to make quick decisions and lead the country in case of a
fall of the Assad regime. Yesterday,
Moreno Ocampo, former prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal, said
that NATO is in possession of all the necessary documentation to request the
arrest of Syrian president for crimes against humanity. Any
action of the international tribunal could speed up the possibility of a direct
intervention of the countries of the UN Security Council as was the case in the
conflict against Libya's Gaddafi.
Begun
in March 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war has already
cost more than 36 thousand dead and nearly a million displaced. There
are about 200 thousand refugees who have
fled to neighboring countries Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. UN
sources report that more than 11 thousand people crossed the Turkish border yesterday.
Many of
them are regular Syrian army deserters.