ISIS demands release of leader’s ex-wife in Lebanon hostage talks

Militants in Syria have threatened to execute Lebanese servicemen they hold captive unless Lebanon releases the ex-wife of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group’s leader and another militant-linked woman, a negotiator said Tuesday.

Salafist Sheikh Wissam al-Masri is mediating the release of 25 police and soldiers held by ISIS and the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, the Al-Nusra Front.

Masri told reporters ISIS wrote a letter to him demanding the release of Saja al-Dulaimi, the former wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as Ola Sharkas, the wife of Al-Nusra commander Anas Sharkas.

The militants also called for “the liberation of all female Muslims detained in Lebanon in connection to the war in Syria,” Masri said.

Lebanese authorities announced earlier this month the arrests of Dulaimi and Sharkas’s wife. Dulaimi had tried to enter Lebanon from Syria with two sons and a daughter, the interior minister said.

The soldiers and police were captured when Syria-based militants briefly overran the Lebanese border town of Arsal in August.

The fighters withdrew after a truce negotiated by clerics, but took 30 hostages.

Four have since been executed, while a fifth died from his injuries in captivity.

AL ARABIYA NEWS