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Jose Garcia

(2,598 posts)
Fri Feb 10, 2017, 03:58 PM Feb 2017

Defiant Assad tells Yahoo News torture report is 'fake news'

Source: Yahoo News

DAMASCUS – Confronted with new evidence of torture and mass hangings in one of his military prisons, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News that the allegations were the product of a “fake news era” and charged that a human rights group, Amnesty International, had fabricated evidence to discredit his embattled government.

“You can forge anything these days,” Assad said when asked about a new Amnesty International report estimating that between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners were killed in a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution” at a military prison outside of Damascus between 2011 and December 2015. “We are living in a fake news era.”

Assad, combative and unyielding, also insisted the United States had no grounds to condemn Syria for human rights abuses, pointing to the invasion of Iraq and to American support for Saudi Arabia, a country that beheads prisoners. “The United States is in no position to talk about human rights,” he said. Challenged over the issue, Assad grew contentious, saying at one point, “You own the questions. I own the answers.”

The Syrian president was also confronted for the first time with chilling photographs taken by a former regime photographer, code named Caesar, depicting rows of emaciated, brutally beaten bodies of detainees — many of them believed to be political protesters — at his military prisons. The photographs — which U.S. officials have likened to images from Nazi concentration camps — were the basis for a landmark lawsuit filed in Spain’s National Court last week accusing nine senior Syrian intelligence and security officials of international human rights crimes.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-defiant-assad-tells-yahoo-news-torture-report-is-fake-news-100042667.html

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Defiant Assad tells Yahoo News torture report is 'fake news' (Original Post) Jose Garcia Feb 2017 OP
Any of our resident defenders of Tusi Gabbard wanna take this? Blue_Tires Feb 2017 #1
So... Are Assad's videos depicting the White Helmets as terrorists fake news as well? DetlefK Feb 2017 #2
'fake news' ... Jopin Klobe Feb 2017 #3
Bashar Assad states torture report is fake news - Ray Bruns Feb 2017 #4
How do we fight this new 'false equivalency" LiberalLovinLug Feb 2017 #5

DetlefK

(16,423 posts)
2. So... Are Assad's videos depicting the White Helmets as terrorists fake news as well?
Fri Feb 10, 2017, 04:10 PM
Feb 2017

According to him, those videos can easily be faked...

Ray Bruns

(4,098 posts)
4. Bashar Assad states torture report is fake news -
Fri Feb 10, 2017, 06:08 PM
Feb 2017

Assad was quoted as saying "We have clearly tortured and murdered way more than what is being reported".

LiberalLovinLug

(14,174 posts)
5. How do we fight this new 'false equivalency"
Fri Feb 10, 2017, 07:06 PM
Feb 2017

Now they also use the charges of "fake news" to dismiss true reports that shed a bad light. From Trump to Assad to Putin. So that when there is a chorus of charges of fake news from our side, they flood the media waves with their own plethora of fake news charges. Until the more ignorant general public is confused and says...once again....a pox on both houses, they're all lying.

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