Assad: US travel ban targeted ‘terrorists’ not Syrian people

Syrian students and their teachers receive training from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in evacuation procedures for an emergency event at a school in the opposition-controlled village of Utaya, eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus. (AFP)

PARIS: Syrian President Bashar Assad defended President Donald Trump’s ban on Syrians entering the US, saying it targeted “terrorists” and not the Syrian people, in an interview broadcast Thursday.
Trump last month summarily denied entry to all refugees for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely. The highly controversial decree, which was suspended by a federal judge, also barred travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria, for 90 days.
In an interview with French media Assad expressed understanding for the ban.
“It’s not against the Syrian people... it’s against the terrorists that could infiltrate some of the immigrants to the West and that happened. It happened in Europe, mainly in Germany and could happen in the US,” he told Europe 1 radio and TF1 television channels in the interview in Damascus.
“For me, as president, I would not worry about that,” he said, accusing Trump’s critics of seizing on the ban “as the fuel for the conflict with Trump.”
Assad revealed that retaking the Daesh’s Syrian bastion of Raqqa — a key objective of the US-led coalition battling the terrorists — was not a priority for his forces.
“Raqqa is a symbol,” he said,
“You have Daesh close to Damascus, you have them everywhere,” Assad said. “For us it is all the same, Raqqa, Palmyra, Idlib, it’s all the same,” vowing to win back “every inch” of Syrian territory.
The French particularly have been pushing for an operation to flush Daesh out of Raqqa, as the suspected incubator of some of the attacks that have claimed 238 lives in France over the past two years.
Across the border, Iraqi forces are four months into a massive operation to drive Daesh out of the city of Mosul. In Syria, an Arab-Kurd rebel alliance has begun advancing on Raqqa with the aim of liberating the city.
Also in the interview, Assad categorically denied that his government practices torture and reiterated his rejection of recent allegations by Amnesty International of executions and atrocities perpetrated at a prison near Damascus.
Assad said Amnesty’s “childish report” contained “not a single fact (or) evidence” to support allegations that some 13,000 people were hanged at the Saydnaya prison between 2011 and 2015.
“They said they interviewed few witnesses, who are opposition and defected. So it’s biased,” the president said.
Regarding torture, he said, “We do not do this, it’s not our policy,” adding: “Torture for what? ... For sadism?... to get information? We have all the information.”
He argued: “If we commit such atrocities it’s going to play into the hands of the terrorists, they’re going to win. It’s about winning the hearts of the Syrian people, if we commit such atrocities... we would not have (popular) support (through) six years” of war.
He was also scathing of the West’s fruitless attempts to mediate in the six-year conflict that has claimed more than 300,000 lives.
The West, he said, “did not want to achieve peace in Syria.” Over the past year, Russia and Iran have helped turn the tables in Assad’s favor with their military backing, while Turkey supports the opposition fighting to oust the strongman.