Accounts of Syria rebels executing prisoners raise new human rights concerns
WASHINGTON — Syrian insurgents fighting to unseat President Bashar Assad face a growing list of accusations that they’ve carried out executions and torture, muddying the Western narrative of a heroic resistance force struggling against a vicious regime.
The issue of rebel conduct has come to the forefront this month largely because of a video posted online showing the aftermath of apparent executions of pro-Assad militiamen during the rebels’ capture of an intelligence center in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
A reporter for the Turkish newspaper Milliyet witnessed the incident Tuesday and confirmed in a first-person account the circumstances of the killings: More than a dozen men were captured alive and then summarily executed in what advocacy group Human Rights Watch called an apparent “war crime.”
The men “were forced into a building, then brought before a court of the Free Syrian Army on the back of a pickup truck, after which they were lined up and shot at lightning speed,” the Milliyet reporter wrote.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/03/159888/accounts-of-syria-rebels-executing.html#storylink=cpy
