50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra
Islamic State (IS) militants beheaded an antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site, Syria’s antiquities chief said on Tuesday.
IS, whose insurgents control swathes of Syria and Iraq, captured Palmyra in central Syria from government forces in May, but are not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite their reputation for destroying artifacts they view as idolatrous under their puritanical interpretation of Islam.
Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said the family of Khaled Asaad had informed him that the 82-year-old scholar who worked for over 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra was executed by Islamic State on Tuesday.
All their murders are horrific, but there’s an extra dimension to it when they murder people for doing good things like preserving and curating antiquities.
Asaad had been detained and interrogated for over a month by the ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants, he told Reuters.
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Abdulkarim said Asaad was known for several scholarly works published in international archaeological journals on Palmyra, which in antiquity flourished as an important trading hub along the Silk Road.
He also worked over the past few decades with U.S., French, German and Swiss archeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra’s famed 2,000-year-old ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site including Roman tombs and the Temple of Bel.
And for that they murdered him and then hung his headless body on a pillar.
These people love their fantasy “god” and they hate human beings.
