Daesh beheads elderly ex-antiquities chief in Syria’s Palmyra

BEIRUT — The Daesh terror group has beheaded the 82-year-old retired chief archaeologist of Palmyra, who refused to leave the ancient city when the militants captured it, Syria's antiquities chief said.

A UNESCO World Heritage site famed for well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins, Palmyra was seized from government forces in May amid fears Daesh might destroy its priceless heritage as it had done in other parts of Syria and Iraq.

Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP he had urged Khaled Al Assaad to leave Palmyra, but he had refused.

"He told us 'I am from Palmyra and I will stay here even if they kill me.'"

Abdulkarim said Assaad was executed Tuesday afternoon in Palmyra, in central Homs province.

"Daesh has executed one of Syria's most important antiquities experts," he said.

Photos purporting to show Assaad's body tied to a post in Palmyra were circulated online by Daesh supporters.

The execution is one of hundreds that have been carried out by Daesh in and around Palmyra since they took the city in May.

“He was the head of antiquities in Palmyra for 50 years and had been retired for 13 years,” Abdulkarim said.

He hailed Assaad as a leading expert on the ancient history of the city, which grew from a caravan oasis first mentioned in the second millennium BC.

“He spoke and read Palmyrene, and we would turn to him when we received stolen statues from the police and he would determine if they were real or fake.”

Body hung on display 

Abdulkarim said Assaad’s body had been hung in the city’s ancient ruins after being beheaded.

But the photo circulating online showed a body on a median strip of a main road, tied to what appeared to be a lamp post.

A sign attached to the body identified it as that of Assaad.

It accused him of being an apostate and a regime loyalist for representing Syria in conferences abroad with “infidels”, as well as being director of Palmyra’s “idols”. 

It also claimed he had been in contact with regime officials.

Abdulkarim said Assaad had been detained by Daesh last month along with his son Walid, the current antiquities director for Palmyra, who was later released.

He said the militants were looking for “stores of gold” in the city.

“I deny wholeheartedly that these stores exist,” Abdulkarim said.

“The whole family is truly remarkable. [Assaad’s] other son Mohammed and his son-in-law Khalil actively participated in the rescue of 400 antiquities as the town was being taken over by the jihadists,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, also reported the execution, saying Assaad had been killed in a “public square in Palmyra in front of dozens of people”.

The execution prompted condemnation from French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who said Assaad had worked with numerous French archaeological missions over the years.

“This barbaric murder joins a long list of crimes committed over the past four years in Syria,” he said in a statement, calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.

Daesh captured Palmyra on May 21, prompting international concern about the fate of the city’s antiquities.

Daesh’s harsh version of Islam considers statues and grave markers to be idolatrous, and the group has destroyed antiquities and heritage sites in other territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.

So far, Palmyra’s most famous sites have been left intact, though there are reports Daesh has mined them, and the group reportedly destroyed a famous statue of a lion outside the city’s museum in June.

Most of the pieces in the museum were evacuated by antiquities staff before Daesh arrived, though the group has blown up several historic Muslim graves.

Daesh has also executed hundreds of people in the city and surrounding area, many of them government employees.

The group also infamously used child members to shoot dead 25 Syrian government soldiers in Palmyra’s ancient amphitheatre.