Paul Wood, the BBC correspondent in Homs responded to my criticisms from yesterday: "Dear As'ad, I hope you're well. The blog is as good as ever -- though I feel I should respond to your criticisms of our recent Homs pieces. You say we never gave details of the allegations made by the refugees of killings by the security forces. The most detailed pieced we did is here:
As you can see we quote three members of an extended family, saying they saw four of their males relatives among a large group of men killed in the street by the security forces. The piece also quotes soldiers who defected as recently as last week, saying prisoners were killed, one describing in detail a summary execution.
Did they make it up? Having spoken to them at length, asking them over and over again what happened, their accounts seemed credible to me, though of course we cannot know for certain.
Over several days of filming displaced people outside Homs, we heard people say many times "they are slaughtering us". We wanted to stick very carefully to first hand accounts, using pictures or quotes only from people who said they had seen things themselves. I was worried about people fabricating things for propaganda reasons but also, in the case of women with missing husbands, that anxiety would make them pass on rumours and fears as fact.
The Ibrahim family were not produced for us by activists or FSA fighters; we came across them while doing some other filming. If it is true that as they say soldiers, or paramilitary Shabiha, were cutting throats, I don't know why they were doing that rather than using a rifles. I went into the interview with them -- as with all the interviews on this subject -- initially sceptical, disbelieving, looking for inconsistencies, quite prepared not to use what they were seeing if it seemed wrong.
Obviously, we will have to wait for further proof of these allegations -- as I think I say in the pieces."
As you can see we quote three members of an extended family, saying they saw four of their males relatives among a large group of men killed in the street by the security forces. The piece also quotes soldiers who defected as recently as last week, saying prisoners were killed, one describing in detail a summary execution.
Did they make it up? Having spoken to them at length, asking them over and over again what happened, their accounts seemed credible to me, though of course we cannot know for certain.
Over several days of filming displaced people outside Homs, we heard people say many times "they are slaughtering us". We wanted to stick very carefully to first hand accounts, using pictures or quotes only from people who said they had seen things themselves. I was worried about people fabricating things for propaganda reasons but also, in the case of women with missing husbands, that anxiety would make them pass on rumours and fears as fact.
The Ibrahim family were not produced for us by activists or FSA fighters; we came across them while doing some other filming. If it is true that as they say soldiers, or paramilitary Shabiha, were cutting throats, I don't know why they were doing that rather than using a rifles. I went into the interview with them -- as with all the interviews on this subject -- initially sceptical, disbelieving, looking for inconsistencies, quite prepared not to use what they were seeing if it seemed wrong.
Obviously, we will have to wait for further proof of these allegations -- as I think I say in the pieces."
PS I told Paul that I remain skeptical. That the word "slaughter" or "madhbahah" may have been used hyperbolically and not literally. I found it hard to believe that they would gather all those men and assign two to cut the throat of all those men. Blood would have reached Hama if this happened. And if they were cutting throats (for no reason whatsoever as they could have easily shot them, which practically could have saved them time and inconvenience). The Syrian Army is capable of brutality and it is proving that daily but this account is not credible at all. And it is rather odd that only one family has reported it. As I said, none of the refugees who made it to Lebanon reported those scenes although the refugees are under prodding and pressure from Hariri goons to report atrocities. And as the Syrian Army command may be worried about unit cohesion, they decided on the spot to round up all these men and then cut their throats. Also, it seems that one man gave that description and he claimed to have seen it all: Paul should have asked him. How long did that take? Do you know how long it would take to cut the throats of all those men? Oh, and the BBC headline is a bit over the top, I would say.
