Kurdish FSA faction decries PYD 'scheming' in Northern Syria

AL-BAB, SYRIA - FEBRUARY 22: Mahmoud Halu Abu Hamza, a commander of the FSA’s Ahfad Salahaddin ("Descendants of Saladin") Brigade speaks during an exclusive interview in Al-Bab, Syria on February 22, 2017. The PYD, the Syrian offshoot of the terrorist PKK organization, does not represent the Kurdish people, according to high-ranking member of a Kurdish faction within the Free Syrian Army (FSA). "The PYD can’t represent the Kurds," told in interview. "They [the PYD] is trying to exert control over Syria’s Kurds by force," he said. Abu Hamza said the PYD considered Kurds who supported Syria’s armed opposition as "more dangerous" than the Daesh terrorist group. "Kurds who support the [Syrian] opposition are not welcomed by the PYD," he said. Abu Hamza said he had been detained earlier by PYD militants due to his cooperation with opposition groups against the PKK offshoot. The commander explained that the Ahfad Salahaddin Brigade was comprised of Kurdish youth willing to fight the PYD, the PYD-linked Syrian Democratic Forces, and Daesh in and around Aleppo’s northern countryside. Late last year, he said, his group had fought both Daesh and the PYD in the town of Mari north of Aleppo. Abu Hamza said that PYD-run prisons were "worse" than the Assad regime’s notorious Sednaya Prison in capital Damascus, where thousands of anti-regime prisoners were reportedly executed. "I was held for 15 months in a dark cell," he recalled. "They tortured me for more than four months because I had cooperated with the opposition." (Footage by Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)