Time to Assassinate Syrian President Assad: Israeli Minister

The US has alleged that Assad had ordered mass execution of Sednaya prisoners and cremated the bodies.

Syrian President Bashar Assad gestures during an interview. (Photo: AP)

An Israeli minister said it is time to assassinate Syrian President Bashar Assad, in light of recent allegations that Assad had ordered mass executions.

The Trump administration alleged that the bodies of those killed were burned in a large crematorium attached to the Sednaya prison complex outside the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Addressing a press conference, Minister of Housing and Construction Yoav Galant said Assad’s actions amount to “genocide”.

Likening the ties between Iran and and Syria to a snake, he said assassinating Assad would be like cutting off the “tail of the snake” after which the focus would be on the head, “which is in Tehran.”

According to Haaretz, Galant said:

We are crossing a red line, and in my view the time has come to assassinate Assad. And when we finish with the tail of the serpent, we will reach the head of the serpent which can be found in Tehran, and we will deal with it, too.

“The reality of the situation in Syria is that they are executing people, using directed chemical attacks against them, and the latest extreme – burning their corpses, something we haven’t seen in 70 years,” Galant said, according to The Times of Israel.

Galant was of the view that Assad and his ally Hezbollah – a Lebanese terror group – are bigger threats to the world than Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, he said:

Anyone who murders people and burns their corpses does not have a place in this world.

The Syrian government on Tuesday denied US accusations that a crematorium had been built at one of its prisons that could be used to dispose of detainees' remains.

The US allegations matched Amnesty International findings that reported in February that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in the four years since a popular uprising descended into war, it said.