Militants behead ‘Mr. Palmyra’

DAMASCUS, Syria – The 81-year-old antiquities scholar had dedicated his life to exploring and overseeing Syria’s ancient ruins of Palmyra, one of the Middle East’s most spectacular archaeological sites. He even named his daughter after Zenobia, the queen that ruled from the city 1,700 years ago.

Relatives and witnesses said Wednesday that Khaled al-Asaad was beheaded Tuesday by Islamic State militants who seized the city earlier this year, his body suspended on a pole in a main square.

The brutal killing stunned Syria’s archaeological community and underscored fears the extremists will destroy or loot the 2,000-year-old Roman-era city on the edge of a modern town of the same name, as they have other major archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq.

Antiquities officials said they believed IS militants had interrogated al-Asaad, a longtime director of the site, trying to get him to divulge where authorities had hidden treasures secreted out of Palmyra to protect them before the extremists seized the ruins.

“We have lost not just a scholar of archaeology but one of the pillars of archaeology in the 20th century,” said Ahmad Ferzat Taraqji, a 56-year-old antiquities expert and friend of the victim.

The Sunni extremists, who have imposed a violent interpretation of Islamic law across the territory they control in Syria and Iraq, claim ancient relics promote idolatry and say they are destroying them as part of their purge of paganism – though they are also believed to be selling off looted antiquities, bringing in significant sums of cash.

Known as “Mr. Palmyra” among Syrian antiquities experts for his authoritative knowledge and decades administering the site, al-Asaad refused to leave even after IS militants captured the town and neighboring ruins in May.

The Palmyra site was al-Asaad’s life, said his nephew, an opposition activist who uses the name Khaled al-Homsi. Even when he could no longer go to the Roman ruins because of his advanced age, al-Asaad lived nearby, “and he could see the archaeological site from his house,” al-Homsi told the Associated Press.

IS extremists detained the scholar three weeks ago, al-Homsi said, speaking on condition his real name not be used for fear of reprisals from IS and the Syrian government.

On Tuesday, al-Homsi watched as al-Asaad was brought in a van to a main square near a vegetable market packed with shoppers. Dressed in ordinary clothes and not the orange jumpsuits worn by other hostages before they were beheaded, al-Asaad stood as a militant read out five accusations against him, including that he was the “director of idols,” represented Syria “at infidel conferences” and visited Shiite powerhouse Iran.

Then, another militant pulled out a knife, at which point al-Homsi said he left the square, unable to watch. Al-Asaad’s body was later suspended from a pole on a main street, a paper outlining the “charges” against him hung around his waist.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, said al-Asaad was a pioneer in Syrian archaeology.

He said IS had tried to extract information from him about where some of the town’s treasures had been hidden in order to save them from the militants.

Palmyra was a prominent ancient city-state under the rule of the Roman Empire. In the third century, its queen, Zenobia, led a revolt against Rome that briefly succeeded in holding much of the region until it was crushed. The ancient remains are a UNESCO world heritage site.

Since falling to IS, Palmyra’s ancient site has remained intact, though the militants destroyed a lion statue dating back to the second century. The statue, discovered in 1975, had stood at the gates of the town museum.

“I begged (al-Asaad) two months ago to leave the town and come to Damascus with his family, but he refused,” said Taraqji, who is director of excavations at the antiquities department in Damascus.

“He believed in destiny,” Taraqji said. “He told me, ‘I was born in Palmyra and will stay in Palmyra and will not leave even if costs me my blood.’ ”