Sunday 12 February 2017

13,000 People Hanged? Amnesty Report on Syria Offers Little Evidence

Posted on February 9, 2017
 photo syrelec_zpsd33a1d58.jpg
In the presidential election of 2014, Syrians voted overwhelmingly in favor of President Bashar Assad
[ Ed. note – Amnesty International has released a report alleging that as many as 13,000 people were murdered by Syrian government authorities at a prison near Damascus since 2011. Among the charges are that large numbers of people were “hanged” in the middle of the night and that people also were “repeatedly tortured and systematically deprived of food, water, medicine and medical care.” Additionally we are told that bodies were “taken away by the truckload and buried in mass graves.”
An analysis of the report by Tony Cartalucci, however, points to a scarcity of any solid evidence to back up the rather lurid claims, and the writer describes the report as “fabricated entirely in the United Kingdom.”  Russia has also denounced the report, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calling it “a fake” and dismissing it as “yet another targeted act of provocation aimed at pouring oil on the fire of the dying-down conflict within Syria.”
Worth considering also is that this is not by any means the first time Amnesty International has issued a report fulminating against the Syrian government. You can go here to read an analysis of two earlier Amnesty reports (one issued in 2011 and the other in 2012) in which questions are raised about accuracy and veracity–and there is also an article here discussing Amnesty’s highlighting of the Syrian conflict in a fundraising appeal last year.
Validating the mainstream media narrative on Syria seems, then, to be an Amnesty métier. ]
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Amnesty International Admits Syrian ‘Saydnaya’ Report Fabricated Entirely in the UK
By Tony Cartalucci
February 9, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci – LD) – Amnesty International’s 48 page report titled, “Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria,” boasts bold claims, concluding:
…the Syrian authorities’ violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya.
However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section  titled, “Methodology,” Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria’s opposition.

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