SIRIJA:
Witnesses Describe Idlib Destruction, Killings, One Year On, Indiscriminate Attacks Inflicting Heavy Toll
Syrian activists have compiled a list of 114 civilians killed since the current assault there, which began on March 10, 2012. Five witnesses, including three foreign correspondents, gave separate accounts to Human Rights Watch that government forces used large-caliber machine-guns, tanks, and mortars to fire indiscriminately at buildings and people in the street. After they entered Idlib, government forces detained people in house-to-house searches, looted buildings, and burned down houses, the witnesses said. ... The attacks on Idlib follow months of atrocities that both the United Nation's Commission of Inquiry and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have described as crimes against humanity. The large-scale military operation on Idlib on March 10 began at around 5 a.m. ... Three children – two girls and one boy – and their father had been killed. One of the girls had fallen from the building so she was lying in the street. The other members of the family were injured as well. It looked like the building had been hit from the roof. There was no particular reason for the army to attack this building. They just shot at everything. They are crazy. They have no particular targets. "Hassan", a journalist with significant experience working in war zones, told Human Rights Watch that one of the people extracting the wounded and killed from the building on Ajama street brought him remnants of the shell used to attack the building. Hassan identified the remnant as a mortar. ... Many of the wounded and killed were brought to a hospital in the old city, which was quickly overwhelmed by the number of casualties. ... At least 20 killed people were brought to the hospital the first day. There were more the second day – at least 30. The third day was terrifying. I don't think anybody was keeping lists at that point. Wounded people kept arriving all the time. Medical personnel were trying to revive and attend to the wounded on the floors in the corridors because there was no space. Doctors were doing surgery without the proper equipment. They were doing their best, but they were really exhausted. ... The hospital was in total chaos. They couldn't cope with the number of killed and injured. The dead were buried right away in a nearby park. But by Sunday [March 11] they had run out of space in the park and the park and school behind it were also being attacked so they had to bury the dead wherever they could. ... There were women, children and elderly among them. Most of the civilians were wounded or killed because of shelling. As government forces moved in to occupy areas of the city, they frequently looted shops and apartments, and deliberately burned down houses of suspected activists, the witnesses said. ... The witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that it is very difficult for people to leave the city as the highway encircling Idlib, forming a belt around the city, is controlled by the Syrian army. Landmines planted by government forces along the border with Turkey have made it even more difficult for people to flee the government's onslaught. Hassan estimated that 85 percent of Idlib's population is still in the city. ... One year after the uprising began in Syria, security forces have killed at least 8,000 civilians according to lists compiled by local activists. Vetoes by Russia and China have prevented the Security Council from taking any action on Syria despite evidence that crimes against humanity are being committed. ... The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has, on multiple occasions, recommended that the Security Council refer the situation to the court. Similarly, a growing number and wide range of countries have voiced their support for an ICC referral. On March 13, during a session at the UN Human Rights Council, Austria delivered a cross-regional statement on behalf of 13 countries supporting the High Commissioner's call for a referral. Human Rights Watch urged others to join the mounting calls for accountability by supporting a referral to the ICC as the forum most capable of effectively investigating and prosecuting those bearing the greatest responsibility for abuses in Syria.
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The Syrian authorities must reveal the fate of Mazen Darwish and SCM staff
Since their detention almost a month ago, Mr. Mazen Darwish and eight other men have been held in incommunicado detention at the Air Force Intelligence detention center located in El Mezzeh, Damascus. They have no access to any of their colleagues, family members or their lawyers and so far no official charges have been pressed against them. ... According to the Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian network of activists, at least 386 detainees died in custody since the start of the uprising on March 15, 2011.
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Amnesty International: 'I WANTED TO DIE' SYRIA'S TORTURE SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT
According to the many testimonies gathered and received by Amnesty International over the past year, people are almost invariably beaten and otherwise tortured and ill-treated during arrest, often during the subsequent transportation to detention centres, and routinely upon arrival at the detention centres and afterwards. Among the victims are children aged under 18. The torture and other ill-treatment appear intended to punish, to intimidate, to coerce “confessions” and perhaps to send a warning to others as to what they may expect should they also be arrested. In almost all cases the detainees are held in incommunicado detention, often for lengthy periods, with no access to visits from their families or lawyers in conditions which all too often amount to enforced disappearance. In scores of cases, the torture or other ill-treatment is so severe that victims have died in custody, leading to a staggering rise in the number of such deaths reported. Amnesty International documented this disturbing trend in its report Deadly detention: Death in custody amid popular protest in Syria, published in August 2011. Since then, the number of reported deaths in custody has continued to rise and at the time of writing had reached 276. Given the number of people believed to be held in conditions amounting to enforced disappearance in Syria whose families have had no information concerning their fate for months, the true figure is likely to be higher. Individuals are particularly at risk of arbitrary detention and torture and other ill-treatment if they take to the streets to protest or in any other way promote protests, record or disseminate information about them, or document government violations. Others run the risk of such abuses if they try to provide medical assistance to people shot by the security forces or otherwise injured in the protests. Others still are at risk for their real or suspected support of the FSA or other armed opposition groups. Torture and other ill-treatment continue to be routinely practised by all the various security forces, whether Air Force Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Political Security, General Intelligence (which is usually referred to as State Security), Criminal Security or the armed forces. Air Force Intelligence – currently headed by Major General Jamil Hassan – has the most feared reputation. Even in hospitals, individuals injured in the protests needing medical assistance may suffer torture and other ill-treatment; some are even killed or are subjected to enforced disappearances. Amnesty International documented how the Syrian authorities have turned hospitals and medical staff into instruments of repression in its October 2011 report Health crisis: Syrian government targets the wounded and health workers. The report also documents how medical staff who defy the government may themselves face arrest, incommunicado detention, torture or other ill-treatment and other prosecution for their attempts to carry out their obligation to put their patients' welfare first. ... “During one of those night-beating sessions a guy had his ribs broken in front of me. Another had his back broken but they did not take him to hospital. A young man from Homs was beaten in one of those sessions with metal pipes. His neck was broken and he died on the spot. I don't know where they took him.” ... “We were carrying two injured people when Military Intelligence caught us. They shot dead with revolvers the injured on the floor. They tied my hands behind my back and blindfolded me… They took me to Military Intelligence in Kafr Sousseh… In the car they beat me, punched me in the head and pulled my hair… I was beaten so much with fists, sticks, kicks. I lost consciousness. I lost sense of time. I came to in a tiny cell. I was in terrible pain, badly bleeding, with bad back pain.” ... In use over many years, although less frequently reported in recent years, is the “German Chair” torture method which involves the detainee being tied by their arms and legs to a metal chair, the back of which is moved backwards, causing acute stress to the spine and severe pressure on the neck and limbs. In the past, detainees tortured by this method have suffered permanent damage to the spine and paralysis. “I was hanged from the metal handcuffs on my hands attached to the wall. This hugely strained my hands and was very painful. I also suffered the 'German chair' torture method and while in that position I was given electric shocks. I was also hanged from the window and my feet did not reach the ground for a few days… By the end of it, I lost my sense of pain – even that caused by electric shocks.” ... “I also was taken to the electric chair – there were three chairs in the torture room, metal, with straps for the wrists and lower legs. A switch is pulled for a few seconds and the electricity surges. Some people lose consciousness immediately. If you don't, they do it again, about three seconds a time. Your mouth fills with saliva, gunk and dribble. You pee. They do it until you collapse. Some go straight to hospital.” ... “The following day at noon they brought a group of detainees, 28 people, to the cell and the corridor adjacent to the cell. All of them were blindfolded and handcuffed. I was forced to look at the security forces while they were beating these detainees. They were kicking them and beating them with thick wooden sticks focusing on their heads for two hours. One man had his shoulder broken in front of me. Another man was my nephew whom I could not see but I identified his voice. I was screaming the whole time and asking them to stop...” ... “The following day I was blindfolded and handcuffed and taken to the interrogation room again. They forced me to kneel and put a stick in my mouth horizontally and tied it up behind my head. Then they brought my dad and started beating him in front of me with their wooden and electric prods for almost 45 minutes.” ... “They used to take eight or nine of us to interrogation, where around 25 to 30 people would be beating us… During one session I saw the death of a crucified man because they slashed his body with a blade. One of the slashes was deep and near his heart causing his death.”
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Revealing the Scale and Horror of Assad's Torture Chambers: An Avaaz Brief on the Locations and Conditions of Syria's Detention Facilities
More than 617 people have been confirmed killed under torture by regime forces since the crackdown started on March 15 of last year. Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on Syria's popular uprising has claimed at least 6,874 victims and seen a further 69,000 people detained over the course of the last nine months. Of the 69,000 detained since March, over 37,000 people remain in detention and some 32,000 people have been released, many of them bearing scars from torture and violence. ... "... I was chained to the bed, but when the door of the room was open, I could see that there was a room across the corridor that was locked for 15 days. When I got transferred to the Airforce Intelligence Branch after the hospital, I met the detainees held in that room. They had started out as 20 people in that room, but some had died. They had not been fed for the entire duration of their detention. In the room where I was held, an injured man on the bed next to me was beaten at least once a day. His leg wasn't treated. I could see the worms and small insects crawling in and out of the wound with my own eyes. In the same hospital, they would use a drill to gouge out eyes. They also used an iron welder to burn the flesh off your body as you are awake. In some cases also, they would use brute force to pull your hair out. At the hospital, they also used the method of hanging you upside down. They kept people hanging like that for days. Sometimes they changed the method of torture according to your "crime". For photographers and videographers, they broke their arms, their wrists, and individual fingers. They also gore their eyes out." ... "In this branch, one of the techniques is that they put the head of someone and squeeze it between two iron walls, and this sometimes smashes their heads in -- some people have died from that. Another is a wooden bed of two pieces that folds together at the middle. It's called the German Chair. Sometimes they put you on your stomach and they fold it so that your legs reach your head and your spine is broken and you are paralysed. ..." ... "... There are elderly men held there – a 70-year-old man was humiliated and his sons were with him. He was punished before his sons. It was a painful scene for us. To see your dad being tortured because he is old. He gets hit on his way to the bathroom because he can't run fast enough and he can't go fast enough. And it hurts you to see your elderly father suffering from hunger. This branch is specialised for defected soldiers. Sometimes even before you defect, even if you show a sign of remorse about shooting demonstrators you are imprisoned and taken to this place. ..." ... "... "The way I got out was that the judge saw my confession, and he saw my body and that my nails were removed. And he realised, and I told him, that I was innocent and had confessed under torture so he let me out. My ribs have been broken also. So I confessed that I killed security forces which is not true. ..." ... There is a building south of the main Adra Prison building which has been converted into a prison for political detainees, where the worst forms of torture have been documented. Avaaz has confirmed 14 cases of execution; bodies are buried in the prison yard. ... Mohammad Mefleh is reportedly responsible for the June 3rd "Friday of the Freedom of the Children" massacre where the recorded number of deaths was 78, but activists believe the casualty toll to be far higher. ... "... It's very normal to see people with broken arms and jaws that are untreated there for weeks. ..." ... Numerous Syrian regime officers were named as being involved in ordering, directing or overseeing torture. A list of 13 of these individuals, named by at least 11 sources, is provided below ... Major General Ali Mamlouk ... General Zuhaier Al Hamad ... General Nazih Hasoun ... General Thair Al Omar ... General Hafiz Makhlouf ... Major General Abd Al Fatah Qudsia ... General Ali Younis ... General Adnan Assi ... General Mohamed Makhlouf ... General Fouad Fadel ... Major General Gamil Al Hassan ... General Adib Salamah ... Major General Mohamed Deeb Zaitoun...
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SAD:
Video: Left Forum Panel on Stopping the US Drone War
Under the US global war of terror, 40% of the US budget goes to preserve and expand the US empire, killing people in the Middle East to protect a global system of exploitation. As an integral part of the terror program, drones are a weapon of choice. The Obama administration is coordinating drone strikes in at least six countries: Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan. In fact, these drones are being used eight times more by the Obama administration than by the Bush regime, in programs run by the military and the C.I.A. Obama's Office of Legal Counsel argues that such strikes are legally justified under international law, basing its argument on the Bush doctrine of borderless, endless “war on terror.” On an almost daily basis, drones circle miles above Earth, following targets. The pilots may live and work out of Colorado or on a base in upstate NY or even in some other part of the world. In this new warfare, the pilot does his killing and then goes home for dinner with his family, remaining removed and aloof from the death and destruction caused by his work. When a home or other location is targeted, the drone cannot tell if there are civilians or insurgents in the vicinity – yet everyone who's killed is called an insurgent.
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