Kurdish Leader Is Arrested in Prague at Turkey’s Request<br />Adam Uzur, an official with the Kurdistan National Congress in Vienna, said<br />that Mr. Muslim had been arrested at his hotel in Prague, the Czech capital, where he was speaking against Turkey’s invasion of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, in northwestern Syria.<br />25, 2018<br />A senior Kurdish official from Syria was detained in the Czech Republic on Sunday under an extradition<br />request from Turkey, according to the Czech police and the official Anadolu News Agency in Turkey.<br />In a recent phone interview from Brussels, where he is based, Mr. Muslim rejected Turkish claims<br />that the Kurds’ Syrian organizations in Rojava, or northern Syria, were fronts for the P.K.K.<br />"Our wish is, God willing, for the Czech Republic to hand over him to Turkey,<br />and justice prevails." A statement issued by Mr. Muslim’s organization, the Movement for a Democratic Society, denounced the arrest.<br />"To the Turks, the best Kurd is a dead Kurd." Last month, Turkey launched an offensive in Afrin<br />and threatened to carry its fight against Syrian Kurds into Manbij and areas farther east where American troops are stationed, which the United States military vowed to resist.<br />The official, Salih Muslim, is the foreign affairs spokesman for the political coalition<br />that governs the Kurdish regions of northern Syria, the Movement for a Democratic Society.
