US Envoy to Syria: Opposition Engaged in Human Rights Abuses

Local Editor

The ambassador of the United States to Syria, Robert Ford, said on Tuesday he had received reports that the opposition groups had engaged in human rights violations.

Ford was also skeptical that Syria has accepted the peace plan proposed by the UN-Arab envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, saying it would be “best to look for action, not words” from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"I have to tell you that my own experience with him (Assad) is you want to see steps on the ground and not just take his word at face value," Ford said at a Capitol Hill hearing.

Ford was asked about recent statements by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch that armed opposition groups in Syria had committed serious human rights abuses. It said these abuses included kidnapping, detention and torture of security force members and government supporters.

"We had reports like that last year, when some of the fighting in Homs became really serious," Ford said.

Snippers -Human Rights Watch: Armed Syrian opposition groups commit abuses

"We raised it even in Syria when my embassy was still open. We discussed it with some of the local revolution council representatives - who are themselves not members of armed groups, but certainly are in contact with them - and emphasized that they would be held to a standard on this if they wanted support from western countries," he said.

Ford said the United States had also raised the matter with the Syrian National Council, a Syrian opposition coalition, and he noted that last week the council issued a statement saying such abuses were “against” what they “stood for”.

The United States announced on February 6 it was closing its embassy in Syria because of the worsening security situation there but Ford remains ambassador, working from Washington.

Source: Reuters
28-03-2012 - 11:42 Last updated 28-03-2012 - 11:42

Speigel Online: Syrian Rebels Forming Death Squads, Beheading Soldiers

Local Editor

After successive accusations of committing crimes, and violations against their own people, Syrian rebels have formed their own laws, courts and death squads in Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs.

According to a report published by German Spiegel on Line Monday, "the militia men beheaded the captured army soldiers."
The report disclosed violent measures by the anti-government armed groups, laying bare the other side of the unrest in the Middle Eastern country.

Hussein, one of the rebels fighting the Syrian army, is quoted in the report as saying that he himself "decapitated four army soldiers who had been detained by opposition gunmen."
Hussein said that "he beheaded the first victim, a Shia soldier who had confessed to using violent tactics, in mid-October, 2011,"

Hussein did not care whether the soldier's confessions were real or he had made them under duress. He had simply grabbed a knife and beheaded the soldier who had knelt down in front of him.
"The soldier had been captured out of sheer bad luck," Hussein.

According to the report, the man is a member of a rebel death squad killing government forces in the name of the "Syrian revolution."
"There are others who are responsible for torturing captured soldiers," it added.
"Many rebels can torture, but not everyone can kill," admits Hussein, who is now receiving treatment in a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tripoli where he and his fellow companions are openly talking about torturing and killing Syrian army soldiers.

"But I do not know why killing is not difficult for me," he added.
Hussein's life story demonstrates the course of actions rebels have taken during more than a year in the Arab state.
The report further divulges that Syrian rebels in Homs have since August, 2011 begun regular execution of Syrian soldiers.

"As of last summer, we have executed 150 men, which constitutes only 20 percent of our prisoners," claimed another hospitalized rebel identified as Abu Rami.
"Moreover, when we realize that a Sunni is spying against us we then hold a brief trial for him," Abu Rami said, adding that they have executed between 200 and 250 people in such cases.
Revealing the shocking incidents in which rebels kill Syrians, he went on to say that "Syria is not a place for the squeamish."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org

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