Syrian Jihadist Created 'Guantanamo' For Prisoners: Ex-Hostage

15 March 2015 - 20H46
MADRID (AFP) -

Islamic State extremists staged mock executions of Western captives held in a Syrian compound intended to be the jihadist answer to Guantanamo, former hostage Javier Espinosa revealed Sunday.

Writing in his El Mundo newspaper, the Spanish journalist who was kidnapped on September 16, 2013 and freed on March 29, 2014, also detailed for the first time the execution of Russian hostage Sergei Gorbunov, who went missing in October, 2013.

Espinosa said IS grouped as many as 23 hostages from 11 Western countries in a villa north of Aleppo, where his captors wanted to replicate the US prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, used to detain enemy jihadist combattants.

Quoting information he'd been told by American journalist James Foley, who was decapitated by IS in 2014, Espinosa wrote: "'They had this project for a long time. The (head guard) told us at the beginning they wanted to intern Westerners in a high-security prison with cameras and lots of guards'."

"'They told us that we would be here for a very long time, because we were the first ones they captured'," Foley confided to Espinosa.

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http://www.france24.com/en/20150315-syrian-jihadist-created-guantanamo-prisoners-ex-hostage/