Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Syrian News
Syrian military kills civilians in reprisals, ‘executes own troops,’ defectors say
DOMZIN, Iraq — Former Syrian soldiers who have escaped to northern Iraq are telling grisly stories of how their units executed unarmed civilians for demonstrating against the Assad regime and staged mass reprisals when residents shot back, on one occasion lining up and shooting 30 defenseless civilians.
The former soldiers — Syrian Kurds who’ve crossed the mountainous border into Iraq’s Kurdistan region in small groups over the past three months, a group that now totals well more than 400 — also brought tales of colleagues being shot for not firing on civilians. One former noncommissioned special-forces officer even said he suspected that other government troops had orchestrated an ambush his unit endured, in an effort to motivate the unit to kill civilians.
Members of a special United Nations commission of inquiry said they’d heard many reports of soldiers being shot for not shooting civilians but that they hadn’t been able to confirm them. The U.N. investigators said they hadn’t heard reports of government-staged ambushes against its own forces.
Reports of brutality against Syrian civilians in the year since the government of President Bashar Assad has moved aggressively against demonstrators demanding Assad’s removal are nothing new. But those accounts have come largely from members of the opposition or refugees, who’ve told investigators of them.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/middle_east/view/20120403syrian_military_kills_civilians_in_reprisals_executes_own_troops_defectors_say/srvc=home&position=recent
DOMZIN, Iraq — Former Syrian soldiers who have escaped to northern Iraq are telling grisly stories of how their units executed unarmed civilians for demonstrating against the Assad regime and staged mass reprisals when residents shot back, on one occasion lining up and shooting 30 defenseless civilians.
The former soldiers — Syrian Kurds who’ve crossed the mountainous border into Iraq’s Kurdistan region in small groups over the past three months, a group that now totals well more than 400 — also brought tales of colleagues being shot for not firing on civilians. One former noncommissioned special-forces officer even said he suspected that other government troops had orchestrated an ambush his unit endured, in an effort to motivate the unit to kill civilians.
Members of a special United Nations commission of inquiry said they’d heard many reports of soldiers being shot for not shooting civilians but that they hadn’t been able to confirm them. The U.N. investigators said they hadn’t heard reports of government-staged ambushes against its own forces.
Reports of brutality against Syrian civilians in the year since the government of President Bashar Assad has moved aggressively against demonstrators demanding Assad’s removal are nothing new. But those accounts have come largely from members of the opposition or refugees, who’ve told investigators of them.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/middle_east/view/20120403syrian_military_kills_civilians_in_reprisals_executes_own_troops_defectors_say/srvc=home&position=recent
Torture of children, rape by Syrian army 'routine,' ex-soldiers say
DOMZIN, IRAQ - In addition to shooting unarmed civilians, Syrian military personnel routinely have raped women and girls, tortured children and encouraged troops to loot the houses they storm, former foot soldiers say.
"What I have seen with my own eyes, it was indescribable," said Rolat Azad, 21, who said he'd served as a master sergeant in Idlib province in the northeast of Syria. There, he commanded 10 men who'd break into houses seeking to arrest men whose names they'd been given by the country's intelligence agencies. "They gave us orders: 'You are free to do what you like,' " he recalled.
Starting last July, he said, his unit arrested and tortured five to 10 people daily. "We had a torture room on our base," he said. "There was physical torture - beatings - and psychological tortures," said Azad, a Syrian Kurd who deserted and fled in March to the Kurdistan region of Iraq. "They also brought women and girls through. They put them in the closed room and called soldiers to rape them." The women often were killed, he said.
Azad - as with other former soldiers here, the name is a pseudonym assumed to protect his family, still in Syria - was interviewed at a camp that Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government set up for Syrian army deserters. He recalled the torture of two young teenage boys. He said they'd been arrested either for shooting videos of the military or showing disrespect for the military and the regime, something that wasn't uncommon, even among children. "I once asked a small kid why he wasn't going to school," Azad said. "He said, 'We won't until this regime is gone.' "
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/04/02/2464798/torture-of-children-rape-by-syrian.html#storylink=cpy
DOMZIN, IRAQ - In addition to shooting unarmed civilians, Syrian military personnel routinely have raped women and girls, tortured children and encouraged troops to loot the houses they storm, former foot soldiers say.
"What I have seen with my own eyes, it was indescribable," said Rolat Azad, 21, who said he'd served as a master sergeant in Idlib province in the northeast of Syria. There, he commanded 10 men who'd break into houses seeking to arrest men whose names they'd been given by the country's intelligence agencies. "They gave us orders: 'You are free to do what you like,' " he recalled.
Starting last July, he said, his unit arrested and tortured five to 10 people daily. "We had a torture room on our base," he said. "There was physical torture - beatings - and psychological tortures," said Azad, a Syrian Kurd who deserted and fled in March to the Kurdistan region of Iraq. "They also brought women and girls through. They put them in the closed room and called soldiers to rape them." The women often were killed, he said.
Azad - as with other former soldiers here, the name is a pseudonym assumed to protect his family, still in Syria - was interviewed at a camp that Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government set up for Syrian army deserters. He recalled the torture of two young teenage boys. He said they'd been arrested either for shooting videos of the military or showing disrespect for the military and the regime, something that wasn't uncommon, even among children. "I once asked a small kid why he wasn't going to school," Azad said. "He said, 'We won't until this regime is gone.' "
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/04/02/2464798/torture-of-children-rape-by-syrian.html#storylink=cpy
RAGE AND REFUGE ON THE BORDER
As a political solution to the violent conflict in Syria becomes more remote, thousands of Syrian refugees continue to pour across Turkey’s southern border. There, an incendiary combination of grief, rage, paranoia and boredom is threatening to tear the opposition apart from within.
The border between Syria and Turkey is blighted with Russian-made landmines, some dating back to the Soviet era, planted by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. More than 17,000 Syrians have crossed this border, and Turkey is expecting thousands more. If the violence escalates, warns the Turkish Red Crescent, up to 500,000 Syrians may try to cross.
...
A young Syrian man approaches and gestures to talk. Ahmad, 26, came here in one of the first refugee waves nine months ago, from the northern town of Jisr al Shughour. He says he was a professional soldier in the Palestine branch of intelligence in Damascus but went AWOL when he was instructed to shoot civilians. He wants to join the Free Syrian Army but says at the moment, there's no point.
"They don't have weapons. People in Syria are being forced to buy bullets with money out of their own pockets," he says, adding that bullets are now at least five dollars each. Ahmad says many inside the camps are eager to fight, but for now, there's nothing they can do but wait. "We just wake up and do nothing. We're about to explode."
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/rage-and-refuge-on-the-border/167/
As a political solution to the violent conflict in Syria becomes more remote, thousands of Syrian refugees continue to pour across Turkey’s southern border. There, an incendiary combination of grief, rage, paranoia and boredom is threatening to tear the opposition apart from within.
The border between Syria and Turkey is blighted with Russian-made landmines, some dating back to the Soviet era, planted by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. More than 17,000 Syrians have crossed this border, and Turkey is expecting thousands more. If the violence escalates, warns the Turkish Red Crescent, up to 500,000 Syrians may try to cross.
...
A young Syrian man approaches and gestures to talk. Ahmad, 26, came here in one of the first refugee waves nine months ago, from the northern town of Jisr al Shughour. He says he was a professional soldier in the Palestine branch of intelligence in Damascus but went AWOL when he was instructed to shoot civilians. He wants to join the Free Syrian Army but says at the moment, there's no point.
"They don't have weapons. People in Syria are being forced to buy bullets with money out of their own pockets," he says, adding that bullets are now at least five dollars each. Ahmad says many inside the camps are eager to fight, but for now, there's nothing they can do but wait. "We just wake up and do nothing. We're about to explode."
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/rage-and-refuge-on-the-border/167/
Cannot find a source for this - it is probably a FB page in Arabic
The Free Syrian Army spoke about the crimes of Al-Assad militias in the National Hospital in Idleb after FsA has invaded it and freed it from the militias that turned it into a detention center for practicing the barbaric torture and carnages againts the detainees just like wht happened in Homs when the fsa in Homs found 85 bodies with all signs of barbaric torture in Hopsital .
The Free Syrian Army in Idlib detect the presence of the bodies of a hundred people in the Refrigerated hospital which has become a regular phenomenon in Hospitals confirms our doubts the existence of similar cases in all hospitals in Syria and also emphasizes information leaked from some people working in regime closed circuits about containers loaded with corpses dumped in the sea
And with high numbers of missing people in Syria, which reached 70 000, we warn of a humanitarian disaster and crimes against humanity have already taken place in Syria and we call on the international community to urgently intervene and internationalize the regime's crimes to the International Court of Justiceإن الاقتحام و السيطرة التي قام بها الجيش الحر على المشفى الوطني في ادلب كشف وجود جثث لمئة شخص في برادات المشفى و الاقتحام الثاني للجيش الحر في حمص الذي كشف وجود 85 جثة في برادات المشفى انما يؤكد شكوكنا بوجود حالات مماثلة في جميع مشافي سوريا و يؤكد أيضا المعلومات التي وردت عن قيام النظام باغراق حاويات محملة بالجثث في البحرو مع ارتفاع اعداد المفقودين في سوريا الذي بلغ 70 الف فاننا نحذر من كارثة انسانية و جرائم ضد الانسانية حدثت بالفعل في سوريا و ندعو المجتمع الدولي لتدخل عاجل و تحويل ملف جرائم النظام الى محكمة العدل الدولية
The Free Syrian Army spoke about the crimes of Al-Assad militias in the National Hospital in Idleb after FsA has invaded it and freed it from the militias that turned it into a detention center for practicing the barbaric torture and carnages againts the detainees just like wht happened in Homs when the fsa in Homs found 85 bodies with all signs of barbaric torture in Hopsital .
The Free Syrian Army in Idlib detect the presence of the bodies of a hundred people in the Refrigerated hospital which has become a regular phenomenon in Hospitals confirms our doubts the existence of similar cases in all hospitals in Syria and also emphasizes information leaked from some people working in regime closed circuits about containers loaded with corpses dumped in the sea
And with high numbers of missing people in Syria, which reached 70 000, we warn of a humanitarian disaster and crimes against humanity have already taken place in Syria and we call on the international community to urgently intervene and internationalize the regime's crimes to the International Court of Justiceإن الاقتحام و السيطرة التي قام بها الجيش الحر على المشفى الوطني في ادلب كشف وجود جثث لمئة شخص في برادات المشفى و الاقتحام الثاني للجيش الحر في حمص الذي كشف وجود 85 جثة في برادات المشفى انما يؤكد شكوكنا بوجود حالات مماثلة في جميع مشافي سوريا و يؤكد أيضا المعلومات التي وردت عن قيام النظام باغراق حاويات محملة بالجثث في البحرو مع ارتفاع اعداد المفقودين في سوريا الذي بلغ 70 الف فاننا نحذر من كارثة انسانية و جرائم ضد الانسانية حدثت بالفعل في سوريا و ندعو المجتمع الدولي لتدخل عاجل و تحويل ملف جرائم النظام الى محكمة العدل الدولية
Alexander Page ? @AlexanderPageSY Close
The syrian people have one demand: ALLOW US TO _UCKING DEMONSTRATE #Syria
Retweeted by Free Syrian
