This Is Not Syria's Newly Appointed Defense Minister Smashing a Statue of the Virgin Mary
The Claim
The guy who destroyed the statue of the Virgin Mary in a video Trump made viral, is now in the defence ministry of the new US backed Syrian regime.
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Emerging story
Recently, social media users have been circulating a video that shows a man destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary. According to these claims, the man in the video is Syria's newly appointed defense minister.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar investigated the circulating claim and found it to be misleading.
Statue of the Virgin Mary Destroyed in 2013
The video dates back to at least October 23, 2013. According to Memri TV, the Washington-based broadcaster of the Middle East Media Research Institute, the man shown is Omar Raghba. In the video, he is seen destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary at a Christian shrine in the village of Al-Yacoubiyah in the Idlib countryside in northwestern Syria.
As explained in a previous fact-check on Misbar, before destroying the statue, he said: "No one will worship except God in the Levant, and nothing will be ruled there except by God’s law. Idols (referring to the statue of the Virgin Mary) will no longer be worshipped in the Levant. We will accept only God, His religion, and the Sunnah of His Prophet."
According to an expert in Islamic movements who spoke in 2013 with the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, Omar Raghba is "the emir of a battalion of the ISIS organization." In a statement issued on October 2013 on its official website (etilaf.org), the Syrian Coalition described this behavior as "offending the sanctity of religions" and pointed out that "it is no secret to anyone that this act and similar acts fall within the framework of consecrating the policy of the regime and its supporters, in an attempt to attribute such acts of sabotage to the components of the revolution."
The Nominated Defense Minister Is Known as Abu Qasra
On December 31, former agronomist and military chief of the political and paramilitary group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Qasra, was nominated as the defense minister in Syria’s transitional government after the fall of Bashar Assad.
Abu Qasra, whose nom de guerre is Abu Hassan al-Hamawi, was a central figure in the offensive that overthrew the Assad regime on December 8.
In an interview, he said, "HTS would be ‘the first’ [of the rebellious groups, ed.] to dissolve its armed wing and integrate into the national forces, demanding that other groups do the same," as reported by France24.
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