Syrian Freedom

05/08/2012 - #Syria - ENGLISH SUBTITLES: Citizen journalist documents the complete destruction of Bab Sbaa in Homs

#Syria Eyewitness: Beaten and burnt… a family’s tale of torture

Yousef and Ahmed display the injuries they suffered at the hands of President Assad’s forces

Ahmed blinks away the tears as he recounts his family’s ordeal. His hands, frail and trembling, roll up his trousers to show the bruises on his knees where they first beat him with sticks. Then he lifts his shirt to reveal the deep burns on his back.

“An 80-year-old man,” he says, his voice rising. “What can they want with an 80-year-old man? I’ve worked hard all my life, I’ve done nothing wrong, and this is how my wife and I are treated in our old age.”

It was Friday 23 March when Ahmed and his wife Maha, in her late seventies, and their 44-year-old son Yousef were taken from their home and tortured at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers. Ahmed was at the mosque when he heard his house in the Bab Sbaa district of Homs had been shelled and rushed home with his son to pull his wife from the rubble. But his relief that she had escaped relatively unscathed soon faded.

“That’s when they came and took us,” he said. “They were armed and in uniform and they ordered us to follow them to one of our neighbours homes which was abandoned.”

It was there that they were led to separate darkened rooms for interrogation. As he was being beaten, Ahmed could hear his son and wife’s cries echoing through the building.

“It was absolute misery,” he says. “They just asked over and over again who was working with the Free Syrian Army in the area. Then they brought out the blowtorch, like the kind you use for welding metal. I thought we were all going to die.”

The hellish questioning lasted three hours. Yousef’s back and arms are littered with dozens of burn marks, some deep gouges as the blowtorch was held to his skin for longer and longer. The fact that the family weren’t detained for longer, Ahmed says, is evidence that the soldiers knew that they had nothing to do with the opposition and were just fishing for information.

His wife is now in hospital recovering after the family fled to Lebanon. She escaped the blowtorch but the beating took its toll. Yousef barely speaks, staring blankly around him. His right arm constantly twitches, a result, his father says, of nerve damage when he was hit by a bullet last year. Even after escaping, the family don’t feel safe, and they have all given false names for fear of reprisals. Like thousands of Syrian refugees, they are staying in one of the few Sunni villages in the Hezbollah ruled and Shia-dominated Bekaa valley. In the streets of Baalbek, just down the road, pictures of Assad shoulder to shoulder with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah adorn the streets, showing local support for the regime across the border.

More bombing and shelling by Bashar al Assad in Bab Sbaa, Homs #Syria

#Syria: A chaotic scene in Bab Sbaa, Homs right after it was hit by Assad’s mortars. Cries, injuries and dust from debris everywhere.

Homs, #Syria: The after effects of shelling on Bab Sbaa 22/3/2012

Homs, Bab Sbaa, #Syria: Officers from the Free Syrian Army demand support from the world before proceeding to show the pile of bodies that were massacred by Bashar al Assad

IMPORTANT FOOTAGE: sniper trying to shoot people crossing the street with english subtitles click (CC) youtube.com/watch?v=5ZIbG1… #BabSbaa #Homs
— Alexander Page (@AlexanderPageSY) February 26, 2012

Homs, Bab Sbaa, #Syria: Martyr Safwan Abdelmatin Zakour 5/2/2012

Scores killed across #Syria as bloody crackdown on opposition continues

Friday, 27 January 2012

The body of a child, whom activists say was killed by the Syrian military, lies at a medical center in Karm al-Zaytoon near Homs Jan.26, 2012. (Reuters)

By Al Arabiya With Agencies

At least 29 people have killed by Syrian security forces on Friday morning, the General Council of the Revolution said, a day after 14 members of a Sunni family were killed in the flashpoint city of Homs on Thursday in one of the grizzliest sectarian attacks in the ten-month uprising.

Eight children, aged between eight months to nine years, were among 14 Bahader family members shot or hacked to death in a building in the Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs, 140-km (88 miles) north of Damascus, they said.

The militiamen, known as ‘shabbiha,’ entered the district after loyalist forces fired heavy mortar rounds on the area, killing another 16 people, residents and activists in the city told Reuters by phone.

YouTube video footage taken by activists, which could not be independently verified, showed the bodies of five children ─ with wounds to the head and neck ─ in a house. The bodies of three women and one man were also shown.

There was no comment from the Syrian authorities, who have placed severe restrictions on independent media in the country.

“Alawites who had remained in Karm al-Zeitoun mysteriously left four days ago, and the rumor was that they did so on orders by the authorities. Today we know why,” said a doctor in the district who did not want to be named.

“We also have seventy people wounded. Field hospitals themselves are coming under mortar fire,” he said.

Hamza, an activist in Homs said that the attack was “pure revenge” for shabbiha members being killed by army defectors loosely grouped under the Free Syrian Army.

He said Sunni families were fleeing Karm al-Zeitoun to other parts of the city, and several Sunni neighborhoods, such as Bab Sbaa, also came under fire.

Tit-for-tat sectarian killings began in Homs four months ago, following armored military assaults on Sunni areas of the city by forces led by members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

And in the rebel city of Hama, also central Syria, where the army launched a major assault on Tuesday, four civilians were killed, including a 58-year-old woman shot dead by snipers, according to the same source.

Elsewhere, one civilian reportedly died in the restive northwestern province of Idlib, and two others were killed in the suburbs of Damascus.

In the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, a teenager was killed when security forces fired indiscriminately on a student demonstration in the town of Nawa, the Observatory said, citing residents.

The killings have raised the prospect of the pro-democracy protest movement against Assad turning into a civil war, as his opponents take up arms and fight back against loyalist forces cracking down on demonstrators.

(01-24-12) Bab Sbaa | Homs #Syria | #Assad Forces Continue to Shell City

Flash | #Syria | Martyr Nour Aldeen Remy, he was 50 years old, and had 7 daughters and 2 sons in Bab Sbaa, Homs 1/25/2012

(01-20-12) Bab Sbaa | Homs, #Syria | Assad Forces Continue to Shell Homes

Protesters on streets of Homs run from gunfire #Syria

Amateur video has emerged online which purports to show protesters running away from continuous gunfire in the Bab Sbaa district of Homs.

9:18PM GMT 20 Jan 2012

Activists said at least six people were killed in Syria on Friday and the bodies of six others were turned over to their families, activists said, two days before the Arab League decides whether to keep monitors there despite their failure to halt bloodshed.

Security men were out in force in several restive towns and cities to counter protests against Bashar that often erupt after weekly Muslim prayers, activists said, while supporters of the Syrian President demonstrated in Damascus.

Hundreds of people have been killed since the monitors arrived in Syria, where an armed insurgency has grown in recent months, contesting President Assad’s grip on several parts of the country.

Arab foreign ministers meet in Cairo on Sunday 22 January 22 to decide whether to prolong the observers’ one-month mandate, which expired on Thursday.

Supporters say the mission reduced violence somewhat, but critics say it provided diplomatic cover for Assad to pursue a crackdown that the UN says has already killed more than 5,000 people.

The Syrian authorities accuse foreign-backed militants of killing 2,000 members of the security forces since the unrest began in March, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five civilians had been killed in gunfire around the country and a security officer had been assassinated in Deraa, possibly because he had changed sides. In the northwestern province of Idlib, security forces returned the bodies of six people who had disappeared two days earlier, it said.

It was not possible to verify the latest accounts of unrest in Syria, where tight media restrictions are enforced.

Street war in Bab Sbaa, Homs as the Free Army protect the demonstrators today #Syria 20/1/2012

WARNING!: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES | Homs, #Syria: 6 defected soldiers were captured by regime forces on (17 Oct 2011) after trying to hide in civilian homes. They were tortured to death by Military Intelligence and stored for months in body coolers. The bodies were only returned today to the people of Bab Al-Sebaa neighborhood. Activist Omar Al-Tillawi shows the torture signs on the mutilated bodies. Arab League observers were contacted by Al-Tillawi to come and see the bodies but they refused saying the regime disallowed them.