Syria's 'rebels': 'Kidnap ransoms & Islamic emirates'

Via MOA, here & here;

"... This unit, known as the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq brigade, kidnapped the "son of my uncle's business partner," said Mohammed, who claimed the group demanded almost $74,000 for his release.A former Catholic clergyman said that he fled Aleppo when fighting reached his home and a number of acquaintances were kidnapped.
"The FSA know who the rich families are in Aleppo. They watch their homes and movements," he said.
"A man I know, whose father is very rich, was on the pavement when a rebel group forced him into a car and drove away.
"Two weeks later they called the father and demanded a huge sum of money; I think it was ($233,700). They said on the phone that they didn't want the money for themselves, but for the revolution."..."

 "... PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Foreign Islamists intent on turning Syria into an autocratic theocracy have swollen the ranks of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and think they are waging a "holy war", a French surgeon who treated fighters in Aleppo has said.Jacques Beres, co-founder of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, returned from Syria on Friday evening after spending two weeks working clandestinely in a hospital in the besieged northern Syrian city.
In an interview with Reuters in his central Paris apartment on Saturday, the 71-year-old said that contrary to his previous visits to Homs and Idlib earlier this year about 60 percent of those he had treated this time had been rebel fighters and that at least half of them had been non-Syrian.
"It's really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren't interested in Bashar al-Assad's fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate," the doctor said.
The foreign jihadists included young Frenchmen who said they were inspired by Mohammed Merah, a self-styled Islamist militant from Toulouse, who killed seven people in March in the name of al-Qaeda.
Assad himself has consistently maintained that the 17-month-old insurgency against him is largely the work of people he refers to as "foreign-backed terrorists" and says his forces are acting to restore stability.
During his previous visits to Syria - in March and May - Beres said he had dismissed suggestions the rebels were dominated by Islamist fighters but he said he had now been forced to reassess the situation.
The doctor's account corroborates other anecdotal evidence that the struggle against Assad appears to be drawing ever greater numbers of fellow Arabs and other Muslims, many driven by a sense of religious duty to perform jihad (holy war) and a readiness to suffer for Islam...."