The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[conniption]

MoA
(embedded links)

February 07, 2017

Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof

A new Amnesty International report claims that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy, based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph.

But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range?

Here is a link to the report.

Before we look into some details this from the "Executive Summary":

From December 2015 to December 2016, Amnesty International researched the patterns, sequence and scale of violations carried out at Saydnaya Military Prison (Saydnaya). In the course of this investigation, the organization interviewed 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya, four prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya, three former Syrian judges, three doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital, four Syrian lawyers, 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria and 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya.
...
On the basis of evidence from people who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya and witness testimony from detainees, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

There are several difficulties with this report.

1. Most of the witnesses are identified as opposition figures and "former" officials who do not live in Syria. Some are said to have been remotely interviewed in Syria but it is not clear if those were living in government or insurgent held areas. Page 9:

The majority of these interviews took place in person in southern Turkey. The remaining interviews were conducted by telephone or through other remote means with interviewees still in Syria, or with individuals based in Lebanon, Jordan, European countries and the USA.

It is well known that the Syrian insurgency is financed with several billion dollars per years from foreign state governments. It runs sophisticated propaganda operations. These witnesses all seem to have interests in condemning the Syrian government. Not once is an attempt made to provide a possibly divergent view. Amnesty found the persons it questioned by contacting international NGOs like itself and known foreign financed opposition (propaganda) groups:

These groups include Urnammu for Justice and Human Rights, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, and the Syrian Institute for Justice and Accountability.

2. The numbers Amnesty provides are in a very wide range. None are documented in lists or similar exhibits. They are solely based on hearsay and guesstimates of two witnesses:

People who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya told Amnesty International that extrajudicial executions related to the crisis in Syria first began in September 2011. Since that time, the frequency with which they have been carried out has varied and increased. For the first four months, it was usual for between seven and 20 people to be executed every 10-15 days. For the following 11 months, between 20 and 50 people were executed once a week, usually on Monday nights. For the subsequent six months, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed once or twice a week, usually on Monday and/or Wednesday nights. Witness testimony from detainees suggests that the executions were conducted at a similar – or even higher – rate at least until December 2015. Assuming that the death rate remained the same as the preceding period, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

From "between x and y", "once or twice a week", "suggests" and "assuming" the headline numbers are simply extrapolated in footnote 40 in a back-of-the-envelope calculation; "If A were true then B would be X":

These estimates were based on the following calculations. If between seven and 20 were killed every 10-15 days from September to December 2011, the total figure would be between 56 people and 240 people for that period. If between 20 and 50 were killed every week between January and November 2012, the total figure would be between 880 and 2,200 for that period. If between 20 and 50 people were killed in 222 execution sessions (assuming the executions were carried out twice a week twice a month and once a week once a month) between December 2012 and December 2015, the total figure would be between 4,400 and 11,100 for that period. These calculations produce a minimum figure of 5,336, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 5,000, and 13,540, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 13,000.

2. I will not go into the details of witness statements on which the report is build. They seem at least exaggerated and are not verifiable at all. In the end it is pure hearsay on which Amnesty sets it conclusions. One example from page 25:

“Hamid”, a former military officer when he was arrested in 2012, recalled the sounds he heard at night during an execution:
"There was a sound of something being pulled out – like a piece of wood, I’m not sure – and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled… If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then."

A court might accept 'sound of "I'm not sure" "kind of gurgling" noise through concrete' as proof that a shower was running somewhere. But as proof of executions?

Of all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions (page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something they have been told of.

3. The numbers of people Amnesty claims were executed are - at best - a wild ass guess. How come that Amnesty can name only very few of those? On page 30 of its report it says:

Former detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.

and

Former prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.

Those 95, some of whom may have been "executed" - or not, are the only ones Amnesty claims to be able to name. That is less than 1-2% of the reports central claim of 5,000 to 13,000 executed. All those witnesses could provide no more details of persons allegedly killed?

Amnesty acknowledges that its numbers are bogus. Under the headline "Documented Deaths" on page 40 it then adds additional names and numbers to those above but these are not from executions:

the exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells

The "Syrian Network for Human Rights" (SNHR) is a group in the UK probably connected to British foreign intelligence and with dubious monetary sources. It only says:

SNHR funds its work and activities through unconditional grants and donations from individuals and institutions.

Now that is true transparency.

SNHR is known for rather ridiculous claims about casualties caused by various sides of the conflict. It is not know what SNHR qualifies as civilians - do these include armed civil militia? But note that none of the mostly civilians SNHR claims to have died in the prison are said to have been executed. How is it possible that a organization frequently quoted in the media as detailed source of casualties in Syria has no record of the 5,000 to 13,000 Amnesty claims were executed?

4. The report is padded up with before/after satellite pictures of enlarged graveyards in Syria. It claims that these expansions are a sign of mass graves of government opponents. But there is zero evidence for that. Many people have died in Syria throughout the war on all sides of the conflict. The enlargement, for example, of the Martyrs Cemetery south of Damascus (p.29/30) is hardly a sign of mass killing of anti-government insurgents. Would those be honored as martyrs by the government side?

5. The report talks of "extrajudicially executed" prisoners but then describes (military) court procedures and a necessary higher up approval of the judgement. One may not like the laws that govern the Syrian state but the courts and the procedures Amnesty describes seem to follow Syrian laws and legal processes. They are thereby - by definition - not extrajudicial.

6. In its Executive Summary the Amnesty report says that "Death sentences are approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria and ...". But there is no evidence provided of "approval" by the Grand Mufti in the details of the report. On page 19 it claims, based on two former prison and court officials:

The judgement is sent by military post to the Grand Mufti of Syria and to either the Minister of Defence or the Chief of Staff of the Army, who are deputized to sign for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and who specify the date of the execution.

It is very doubtful that the Syrian government would "deputize" or even inform the Grand Mufti in cases of military or criminal legal proceedings. Amnesty International may dislike the fact but Syria is a secular state. The Grand Mufti in Syria is a civil legal authority for some followers of the Sunni Muslim religion in Syria but he has no official judiciary role. From the 2010 Swiss dissertation Models of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria quoted here:

In Syria a mufti is a legal and religious expert (faqih and ‘alim) who has the power to give legally non-binding recommendations (sing. fatwa, pl. fatawa) in matters of Islamic law.
...
Queries which are either sought by a shari‘a judge or private individuals regard the personal status laws of the Muslim community only. In the Arab Republic fatawa are given neither to public authorities nor to individual civil servants, ..

Neither the Syrian constitution nor any Syrian law I can find refers to a role of the Grand Mufti in any military or civil criminal court proceding. The Amnesty claim "approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria"is not recorded anywhere else. It is very likely false. The Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, is a moderate, recognized and accomplished scholar. He should sue Amnesty for this slander.

Syrian law includes a death penalty for certain severe and violent crimes. Before 2011 actual executions in Syria were very rare, most death sentences were commuted. Allegedly the laws were amended in late 2011, after the war in Syria had started, to include the death penalty as possible punishment for directly arming terrorists.

It is quite likely that the Syrian military and/or civil judiciary hand out some death penalties against captured foreign and domestic "rebels" it finds them guilty of very severe crimes. It is fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other extreme groups well known for mass murder and other extreme atrocities. It is likely that some of those sentences are applied. But the Syrian government has also provided amnesty to ten-thousands of "rebels" who fought the government but have laid down their arms.

The claims in the Amnesty report are based on spurious and biased opposition accounts from outside of the country. The headline numbers of 5,000 to 13,000 are calculated on the base of unfounded hypotheticals. The report itself states that only 36 names of allegedly executed persons are known to Amnesty, less than the number of "witnesses" Amnesty claims to have interviewed. The high number of claimed execution together with the very low number of names is not plausible.

The report does not even meet the lowest mark of scientific or legal veracity. It is pure biased propaganda.

Note: An earlier version of this piece mixed up the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Both are registered in the UK and claim to provide accurate casualty data from Syria. Only SNHR is referenced in this Amnesty report.

Posted by b on February 7, 2017

[seemslikeadream]

conniption

is that what I had to post to get you back here?

Thank you

MoA
(embedded links)

February 07, 2017

Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof

A new Amnesty International report claims that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy, based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph.

But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range?

Here is a link to the report.

Before we look into some details this from the "Executive Summary":

From December 2015 to December 2016, Amnesty International researched the patterns, sequence and scale of violations carried out at Saydnaya Military Prison (Saydnaya). In the course of this investigation, the organization interviewed 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya, four prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya, three former Syrian judges, three doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital, four Syrian lawyers, 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria and 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya.
...
On the basis of evidence from people who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya and witness testimony from detainees, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

There are several difficulties with this report.

1. Most of the witnesses are identified as opposition figures and "former" officials who do not live in Syria. Some are said to have been remotely interviewed in Syria but it is not clear if those were living in government or insurgent held areas. Page 9:

The majority of these interviews took place in person in southern Turkey. The remaining interviews were conducted by telephone or through other remote means with interviewees still in Syria, or with individuals based in Lebanon, Jordan, European countries and the USA.

It is well known that the Syrian insurgency is financed with several billion dollars per years from foreign state governments. It runs sophisticated propaganda operations. These witnesses all seem to have interests in condemning the Syrian government. Not once is an attempt made to provide a possibly divergent view. Amnesty found the persons it questioned by contacting international NGOs like itself and known foreign financed opposition (propaganda) groups:

These groups include Urnammu for Justice and Human Rights, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, and the Syrian Institute for Justice and Accountability.

2. The numbers Amnesty provides are in a very wide range. None are documented in lists or similar exhibits. They are solely based on hearsay and guesstimates of two witnesses:

People who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya told Amnesty International that extrajudicial executions related to the crisis in Syria first began in September 2011. Since that time, the frequency with which they have been carried out has varied and increased. For the first four months, it was usual for between seven and 20 people to be executed every 10-15 days. For the following 11 months, between 20 and 50 people were executed once a week, usually on Monday nights. For the subsequent six months, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed once or twice a week, usually on Monday and/or Wednesday nights. Witness testimony from detainees suggests that the executions were conducted at a similar – or even higher – rate at least until December 2015. Assuming that the death rate remained the same as the preceding period, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

From "between x and y", "once or twice a week", "suggests" and "assuming" the headline numbers are simply extrapolated in footnote 40 in a back-of-the-envelope calculation; "If A were true then B would be X":

These estimates were based on the following calculations. If between seven and 20 were killed every 10-15 days from September to December 2011, the total figure would be between 56 people and 240 people for that period. If between 20 and 50 were killed every week between January and November 2012, the total figure would be between 880 and 2,200 for that period. If between 20 and 50 people were killed in 222 execution sessions (assuming the executions were carried out twice a week twice a month and once a week once a month) between December 2012 and December 2015, the total figure would be between 4,400 and 11,100 for that period. These calculations produce a minimum figure of 5,336, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 5,000, and 13,540, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 13,000.

2. I will not go into the details of witness statements on which the report is build. They seem at least exaggerated and are not verifiable at all. In the end it is pure hearsay on which Amnesty sets it conclusions. One example from page 25:

“Hamid”, a former military officer when he was arrested in 2012, recalled the sounds he heard at night during an execution:
"There was a sound of something being pulled out – like a piece of wood, I’m not sure – and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled… If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then."

A court might accept 'sound of "I'm not sure" "kind of gurgling" noise through concrete' as proof that a shower was running somewhere. But as proof of executions?

Of all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions (page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something they have been told of.

3. The numbers of people Amnesty claims were executed are - at best - a wild ass guess. How come that Amnesty can name only very few of those? On page 30 of its report it says:

Former detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.

and

Former prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.

Those 95, some of whom may have been "executed" - or not, are the only ones Amnesty claims to be able to name. That is less than 1-2% of the reports central claim of 5,000 to 13,000 executed. All those witnesses could provide no more details of persons allegedly killed?

Amnesty acknowledges that its numbers are bogus. Under the headline "Documented Deaths" on page 40 it then adds additional names and numbers to those above but these are not from executions:

the exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells

The "Syrian Network for Human Rights" (SNHR) is a group in the UK probably connected to British foreign intelligence and with dubious monetary sources. It only says:

SNHR funds its work and activities through unconditional grants and donations from individuals and institutions.

Now that is true transparency.

SNHR is known for rather ridiculous claims about casualties caused by various sides of the conflict. It is not know what SNHR qualifies as civilians - do these include armed civil militia? But note that none of the mostly civilians SNHR claims to have died in the prison are said to have been executed. How is it possible that a organization frequently quoted in the media as detailed source of casualties in Syria has no record of the 5,000 to 13,000 Amnesty claims were executed?

4. The report is padded up with before/after satellite pictures of enlarged graveyards in Syria. It claims that these expansions are a sign of mass graves of government opponents. But there is zero evidence for that. Many people have died in Syria throughout the war on all sides of the conflict. The enlargement, for example, of the Martyrs Cemetery south of Damascus (p.29/30) is hardly a sign of mass killing of anti-government insurgents. Would those be honored as martyrs by the government side?

5. The report talks of "extrajudicially executed" prisoners but then describes (military) court procedures and a necessary higher up approval of the judgement. One may not like the laws that govern the Syrian state but the courts and the procedures Amnesty describes seem to follow Syrian laws and legal processes. They are thereby - by definition - not extrajudicial.

6. In its Executive Summary the Amnesty report says that "Death sentences are approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria and ...". But there is no evidence provided of "approval" by the Grand Mufti in the details of the report. On page 19 it claims, based on two former prison and court officials:

The judgement is sent by military post to the Grand Mufti of Syria and to either the Minister of Defence or the Chief of Staff of the Army, who are deputized to sign for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and who specify the date of the execution.

It is very doubtful that the Syrian government would "deputize" or even inform the Grand Mufti in cases of military or criminal legal proceedings. Amnesty International may dislike the fact but Syria is a secular state. The Grand Mufti in Syria is a civil legal authority for some followers of the Sunni Muslim religion in Syria but he has no official judiciary role. From the 2010 Swiss dissertation Models of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria quoted here:

In Syria a mufti is a legal and religious expert (faqih and ‘alim) who has the power to give legally non-binding recommendations (sing. fatwa, pl. fatawa) in matters of Islamic law.
...
Queries which are either sought by a shari‘a judge or private individuals regard the personal status laws of the Muslim community only. In the Arab Republic fatawa are given neither to public authorities nor to individual civil servants, ..

Neither the Syrian constitution nor any Syrian law I can find refers to a role of the Grand Mufti in any military or civil criminal court proceding. The Amnesty claim "approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria"is not recorded anywhere else. It is very likely false. The Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, is a moderate, recognized and accomplished scholar. He should sue Amnesty for this slander.

Syrian law includes a death penalty for certain severe and violent crimes. Before 2011 actual executions in Syria were very rare, most death sentences were commuted. Allegedly the laws were amended in late 2011, after the war in Syria had started, to include the death penalty as possible punishment for directly arming terrorists.

It is quite likely that the Syrian military and/or civil judiciary hand out some death penalties against captured foreign and domestic "rebels" it finds them guilty of very severe crimes. It is fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other extreme groups well known for mass murder and other extreme atrocities. It is likely that some of those sentences are applied. But the Syrian government has also provided amnesty to ten-thousands of "rebels" who fought the government but have laid down their arms.

The claims in the Amnesty report are based on spurious and biased opposition accounts from outside of the country. The headline numbers of 5,000 to 13,000 are calculated on the base of unfounded hypotheticals. The report itself states that only 36 names of allegedly executed persons are known to Amnesty, less than the number of "witnesses" Amnesty claims to have interviewed. The high number of claimed execution together with the very low number of names is not plausible.

The report does not even meet the lowest mark of scientific or legal veracity. It is pure biased propaganda.

Note: An earlier version of this piece mixed up the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Both are registered in the UK and claim to provide accurate casualty data from Syria. Only SNHR is referenced in this Amnesty report.

Posted by b on February 7, 2017

[conniption]

slad, slad, slad...

please don't be upset with me, but . . . this may be my last post if something doesn't change around here.

There is no one I love enough or hate enough to make it okay for them to spam the board with their opinions. good or bad. right or wrong. agree or disagree. In fact, I was about to compose a thread asking the mod to reign in runaway posters and put a limit on the number of posts per day . . . three, maybe five per day seems reasonable to me? A rule like that might make for a healthier board and a more healthy and thoughtful poster as well.

between you and AD...I just can't take it anymore.

much love,
terry

[seemslikeadream]

sorry you feel that way ..never could understand why one person's way of posting should matter to anyone here..taken so personally..how much effort does it take to ignore something?


also sorry you can't take a compliment from me without the public put down..what's up with that...thanks for the heads up friend

[Elvis]

It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph.

But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range?

Thanks, Conniption. That's what I'm talking about—the number seemed pulled out of a hat, exaggerated, unsubstantiated and pushed a little too hard in the press.

[American Dream]

A thousand people tortured to death is a horror beyond horrors. Whether death came quickly or slowly, my heart goes out to all the victims of State Violence. Such heartless brutality can never be acceptable.

[Sounder]

As Loubna Mrie wrote in an article back around pg.105...

There were many activists against the government, later detained and kidnapped by extremist groups, who are left out of the conversation.

Yes, left out because it is not at all convenient to acknowledge that the killers of the 'revolutionary vanguard' were, wait for it, -the nastier 'revolutionary vanguard' that the lesser vanguard still supports in the taking down of that, we are repeatedly told, very bad man. Did you hear, he killed at least 13,000 people since 2011?

But yes, certainly any torture is horrible, and we can be certain that the 'real' Syrian revolutionary vanguard know how to torture and kill with relish.

[American Dream]

“All you see is blood”: life at a death camp where Assad has slaughtered thousands



Beatings. Starvation. Rape. And then death, administered quickly and with sickening efficiency.

Those are the hallmarks of Saydnaya Prison, a facility just outside of Damascus that the Assad regime has turned into a death camp. Many of the inmates are civilian dissidents, and they are mostly killed not long after their arrival. As detailed in Amnesty International’s newest report from Syria, “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison,” between 5,000 and 13,000 people have been executed there since the civil war began in 2011.

Saydnaya is not a prison, since it’s not a place where people go to live out jail sentences before being released. It is a death camp, one designed to destroy the human soul and body.

This isn’t a dark chapter from a history book. This is happening right now, and the crimes are being committed by a leader President Obama did little to oust, and whom President Trump has suggested he might actually help.

Life and death at a Syrian prison you enter but rarely leave

Amnesty’s report is exceptionally well-documented. Researchers from the advocacy group spoke to 84 people with knowledge of what happens at Saydnaya, including 31 former inmates, four former guards, and three former judges at the prison’s kangaroo courts. Their testimony, for the most part, speaks for itself.

When prisoners are brought to Saydnaya, they are greeted with what the guards call a “welcome party.” Here’s how Salam, a detainee from 2012 to 2014, describes it:

You are thrown to the ground and they use different instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper wire ends — they have little hooks so they take a part of your skin — normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different sizes and metal bars. Also they have created what they call the “tank belt”, which is made out of tyre that has been cut into strips. ... They make a very specific sound; it sounds like a small explosion. I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is happening. You’re in shock. But then the pain comes.

If you survive the welcome — some don’t, killed by blunt force trauma to the head — you are assigned to one of two buildings, either the “red” (mostly for civilian protesters) or “white” (former Syrian military soldiers who have offended the government somehow). Detainees at both prisons are subject to vicious torture.

The prisoners are stripped naked and thrown into small underground cells. Guards loyal to Assad keep the prisoners there for up to a month, a former guard explains, to break them: “We needed to make them understand that now they were prisoners. Now they were under our shoes.”

Afterward, the prisoners are transferred to crowded aboveground cells, where they are not allowed to speak. The guards force the inmates to select a shawish (leader) or select one themselves. The shawish’s job is to pick who gets tortured on a given day or else be tortured himself.

“The shawish would be told that he would have to choose five from the cell who had broken the penalty of not talking,” Jamal, an inmate, explains. “If he didn’t bring the five, then he would be tortured himself, very badly, maybe even until death.”

After that, torture becomes the rule of the day. When breakfast is delivered, the prisoners are beaten. When they go to the bathroom, they are occasionally forced to rape each other — as Omar, a high school student before his detention, details:

Continues: http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/7/14532 ... ernational

[kool maudit]

In 2007, AD, you posted in support of US troops resisting the Iraq war:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15764&p=161300&hilit=Iraq#p161300

In 2008, you posted material claiming that:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16112&p=165682&hilit=Iraq#p165682

"a forerunner to Vice President Cheney’s Office of Special Plans (created to trump up intelligence on Iraq's WMDs), Team B was created to exaggerate the national security threat posed by the Russians as a way of justifying massive, sustained defense budgets."

Also in 2008, you posted an article stating that:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16276&p=167502&hilit=Iraq#p167502

"following September 11, 2001, the corporate news media has almost uniformly supported the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the overall agenda of US imperialism."

Now, however, you are posting an article lamenting the fact that Obama did not "do more" to oust Bashar al-Assad, another authoritarian Ba'athist ruler one country over.

What led you from your seeming opposition to the Iraq war to your seeming support for a near-identical "regime change" effort next door?

[American Dream]

Human Slaughterhouse: Amnesty International Says Up to 13,000 Hanged at Syrian Prison

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/9/h ... al_says_up

[Elvis]

NPR this morning blithely reporting as fact "13,000" as the number of deaths.

These articles read just like the Saddam scare stories of the Bush Error. There are a lot of problems with the report, and especially with the reporting on the report. I'm highly skeptical.


And AD, is merely reposting a link without comment your only reply to kool maudit's question?

What led you from your seeming opposition to the Iraq war to your seeming support for a near-identical "regime change" effort next door?

[American Dream]

Yes- his comments do not warrant direct response. I believe that a thinking human being can and should read critically and it should not be assumed that any and all articles represent my exact opinions- a logical impossibility anyway, since they sometimes/often take opposing positions.

[Elvis]

But AD, in the aggregate, you do seem to come off as supporting, if only by default, the Western-supported ISIS headchoppers.

Did you critically read the MoA criticisms of the Amnesty report? Do you accept the report uncritically? Do you favor MSM news outlets repeating the outside "13,000" number as fact?

[American Dream]

It is a stereotypical- and weak- argument to equate criticism of the Assad Regime's horrific violence with support for ISIS. Also, a numbers game does not erase the underlying horrors:

Human Slaughterhouse: Amnesty International Says Up to 13,000 Hanged at Syrian Prison

NICOLETTE WALDMAN: What we’ve been told is that between 10,000 and 20,000 detainees are held in Saydnaya at any given time. But I want to point out that it’s very difficult to know exactly how many, because the government releases no evidence, no information on the whereabouts of the people that they arrest. And, in fact, almost every detainee arrested by the Syrian authorities is disappeared, meaning that they’re cut off from their friends, their families and the outside world.

In terms of the other detention facilities in Syria, there is a vast network of centers that we know about and centers that we do not know about. So, this is a very large system that has processed tens of thousands of people since 2011, in particular. And since that time, as many as 17,700 people have died as a result of this—these extermination policies, which is the result of repeated torture and terrible conditions. So, the 17,700 deaths is even in addition to these as many as 13,000 people who have been hanged at Saydnaya prison.



NICOLETTE WALDMAN: What we did for this report is that we carried out the research over the course of 12 months, so from December 2015 to December 2016. And in that time, we interviewed 84 witnesses. These witnesses included former detainees who had witnessed different steps of the execution process. And we also identified former guards and officials at the prison. As well, we interviewed former judges and Syrian lawyers. And with all of the information we received, which was oftentimes collected after two or three or more interviews with each witness to evaluate the veracity and the consistency of what they were saying, we were able to corroborate, cross-check and finally build up a step-by-step picture of what is happening at Saydnaya.

Now, most of these interviews were carried out in southern Turkey and in other areas in Turkey, as well as remotely with witnesses in Lebanon, Jordan, the U.S. and Europe. And we were forced to actually conduct this research outside of Syria, because we have been barred from entering government-controlled areas since 2011. We’ve also been barred, along with almost every international monitoring group, from entering the prisons in Syria. So, what’s important to remember is that these are really black holes of war crimes and crimes against humanity, where crimes have been taking place on a widespread, systematic and continual basis since 2011. And the main crimes against humanity that are being committed—again, these are crimes against humanity, some of the most serious international crimes that you could ever imagine. But just at Saydnaya, the crimes against humanity that are being carried out since 2011 are murder, disappearance, torture and extermination. So these are massive violations that we’re really pushing the world to take notice of and to take action.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Nicolette, as you mentioned, you also spoke to prison guards, former prison guards. Now, that prison was run by Syrian military personnel. How did you get them to speak to you? And what did they say about why they were working at this prison?

NICOLETTE WALDMAN: So, to identify the guards, we ended up taking, again, a very long and arduous process of using local contacts, civil society organizations, our own contacts—basically, a network of people—to help us identify these people, because we felt that these findings were so significant and so weighty that we needed to have not only the witness testimony, but also people from the inside. And what they told us about why they conducted these crimes is really—is not something that we talked about. Instead, we were trying to get the information.

However, what is clear to me is that this is not a system that is carried out by one person or another. This is a top-down system, where very—it’s very much controlled through the highest levels of the Syrian government and the Syrian political establishment. And what we found about these policies of mass hangings and extermination is that they come from the very top, and that, actually, the very farcical death sentences that are issued to the prisoners are signed by the minister of defense, who is deputized to act for President Assad, and that the hangings themselves, which take place in the middle of the night and in total secrecy, are overseen by a panel of men which include top-level security force officers, as well as top officials from the prison and, as well, from Tishreen Military Hospital, where the prisoners are taken by the truckload after they are hanged, to be registered before they are taken on to mass graves.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Now, the Assad regime, as you’ve pointed out, does not talk about this prison. It’s more or less concealed from view. But the Assad regime has, of course, been accused of some of the worst atrocities against its civilian population, and that occurs mostly in broad daylight.

NICOLETTE WALDMAN: Yeah.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Now, you say what’s going on in this prison is more sinister. Why is that?

NICOLETTE WALDMAN: It’s absolutely sinister. And I think that’s the exact right word to use, because not only are these hangings taking place, again, on a routine basis, weekly or twice a week, but the conditions in which these prisoners are held are just very difficult to comprehend. But we have to try. And basically, what we’ve been told, through very consistent testimony—I heard the same things again and again—is that prisoners are actually routinely beaten. They are also not allowed to make any sound. So even when they are tortured, they cannot make a sound. And they are punished if they do, with further beatings. They are also forced to pick somebody in the cell, who then must dole out the punishment or the torture each day. And they’re also, what we’ve been told, forced to rape each other. The prisoners, especially the older prisoners, will be forced to rape sometimes the younger prisoners. And what we were told by one witness is that after these rapes, the men are so traumatized that they even stop eating, and they just can’t carry on.

But in these very sadistic and just horrible rules, the prisoners are also being subjected to the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. So they’re dying horrific deaths of thirst, of hunger, of diseases, and then treatable infections. All of what they’re going through is treatable. And this is why it’s—we are calling this the crime against humanity of extermination, which is a particular crime in the Rome Statute which refers to when a state actually inflicts conditions on a certain sector of a population and with the intent of destroying that population. And what we found is that the Syrian authorities aim to destroy the people that they have in their custody.

And finally, I want to point out that these people, the vast majority of them, are civilians. Some of their most common profiles are long-term political dissidents. They’re human rights defenders. They’re journalists. They’re humanitarian aid activists. And sometimes they have just people who went to one or two protests. So these are people who went out and basically spoke and demanded a freer and fairer society in Syria, and for that, they are paying the ultimate price.

More at: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/9/h ... al_says_up

[Elvis]

But...did you critically read the MoA criticisms of the Amnesty report? Do you accept the report uncritically? Do you favor MSM news outlets repeating the outside "13,000" number as fact?