Akram sent me this: "Deadly Reprisals is the latest report issued by Amnesty International
about what happening in Syria and can be downloaded here. The
report, full of horrible details, worth to be read in an objective and critical
manner because, on one hand this is the first international investigation
carried out on the ground from inside Syria and, on the other hand, one can
question the objectivity of the investigators given the fact that they were,
almost probably, moving with the assistance of local opposition
"activists".
I read the report twice, trying to overcome my emotions and what I can say about the report is the following:
I read the report twice, trying to overcome my emotions and what I can say about the report is the following:
- I have some remarks on the accuracy of some testimonies of the second chapter: Deliberate Killings
- I can say that accounts of the third chapter: Indiscriminate Attacks Causing Civilian Casualties and the fourth chapter: Wanton Destruction of Homes and Property, are possibly credible. Actually, a friend of mine that I personally trust, well educated, more or less secular with no sharp positions with or against the regime, residing in Harasta, a town in Al-Ghouta, near Damascus, told me, 2 weeks ago, similar stories. And here are the headlines:
- Daily random shelling of distant areas in Al-Ghouta perpetrated by a dozen or so of tanks positioned near a military base in the outskirt of Harasta.
- Ultimatums by the army to the residents of some villages to evacuate their homes before the army shells the whole area (the example he gave me was about the tiny village of Missraba).
- Looting and sabotaging houses and farms and shooting ships and cows in what it seemed for him as an act of revenge because of the high losses that hit the army in its confrontations with the rebels
- Threatening the residents that if they don't hand their relatives suspected of being fighters the army will do this or that.
- He didn't tell me about anyone killed deliberately or by mistake
- Finally, my greatest shock, besides the accounts themselves, is that the perpetrators of the horrible acts described in the report weren't always Shabbyha nor Mukhabarat, but, in most cases were regular soldiers, average Syrians like me. I'm wondering now what I would do if I found myself in their situation."
