Lone survivor’s horrific account of latest alleged massacre at hands of #Syria regime

Mahmoud, a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of Syria, rests in a field hospital after he was found, Aug. 6, 2012, having been blindfolded, beaten and sprayed with bullets. (AP)

07/08/2012

(AP) ANADAN, Syria — The guards pulled him from his cell before dawn on Monday, bound his hands, blindfolded him and drove him to an empty lot in the Syrian city of Aleppo. They sat him in a row with 10 other captives, he said, then cocked their guns and opened fire.

“They sprayed us,” recalled 21-year-old Mahmoud, the lone survivor of the latest mass killing of Syria’s civil war. “The first bullet hit my chest, then one hit my foot, then my head. As soon as my head got hit, I thought, `I’m dead.”’

Reports of such killings have surfaced frequently during the 17 months of deadly violence that activists seeking to topple President Bashar Assad say has killed more than 19,000 people. But details are usually scarce — no more than activist reports or amateur videos of bloodied bodies or mass graves posted on YouTube.

Mahmoud related his grisly ordeal to The Associated Press hours after it happened. Struggling to speak, he lay in a bed in a makeshift rebel-run field hospital set up in a wedding hall in this town 13 miles north of Aleppo. Bandages covered his foot, head and chest. Plastic vines and colored lights adorned the walls of the darkened building, and two red velvet chairs once used by brides and grooms sat on a small stage.

Mahmoud gave only his first name to protect his family who still live in the area.

While his story could not be independently confirmed, Mahmoud’s wounds matched his story and residents who found him and his dead colleagues corroborated certain details.

Together, they painted a picture of the summary slaying of 10 men, at least some of whom had only loose links to the armed rebels seeking to topple the regime. That story jibes with activist claims of the increasingly brutal tactics regime forces are using to try to crush the rebellion that has spread to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Syria’s uprising started in March 2011 with peaceful protests calling for political reforms that were met with a fierce regime crackdown. Government brutality grew as dissent spread, and many in the opposition took up arms as the conflict morphed into a civil war.

Aleppo has been a stronghold of government support throughout the uprising, with a wealthy business class and many minority communities who fear they’ll suffer if Assad falls. Until recently, the city of some 4 million people had been spared the violence that has ravaged other Syrian cities.

But during the last two weeks, rebels have been pushing into Aleppo’s neighborhoods, clashing with security forces and torching police stations in a push to “liberate” the city. Syrian media has vowed the army is gearing up for a “decisive battle,” while anti-regime activists have reported swelling numbers of troops and tanks on the city’s edges.

The Syrian government blames the uprising on armed gangs and terrorists backed by foreign powers that seek to weaken Syria.

Mahmoud receives treatment in a field hospital after he was found Aug. 6, 2012, with three gunshot wounds in the town of Anadan

(Credit: AP)

It was amid these tensions that Mahmoud, a Palestinian resident of Aleppo, had his fateful brush with Syrian security. On Thursday, Mahmoud said, he and a friend went to collect their paychecks from the thread factory where they work and heard clashes nearby. Soon eight men in civilian clothes stopped them and asked for their IDs and cell phones.

On Mahmoud’s phone they found videos of anti-government demonstrations and messages he sent to rebels from the Free Syrian Army, asking God to protect them and make them victorious. The men threw Mahmoud and his friend in the trunk of a car and drove them to a trash dump, where they were blindfolded, bound and beaten with sticks and large rocks before being taken to a security office.

Mahmoud was locked in a crowded cell with about a dozen other men, he said. Each day, some were taken out and new ones brought in.

“We were there for four days and they only gave us water to drink once. They never fed us,” he said. “They never asked us anything. Every day it was beating, beating, beating.”

Before dawn on Monday, guards pulled Mahmoud and 10 others from their cells and told they were going to see a judge. They were bound at the wrists, blindfolded and driven to Aleppo’s Khaldiyeh neighborhood, where they were lined up on a patch of rocky soil.

“They sat us all down next to each other, `You here, you here, you here,”’ Mahmoud said. “Then each one cocked his weapon and the shooting started.”

Mahmoud was shot three times. Bullets pierced his chest and foot and one grazed his skull. Minutes later, silence returned, and he realized he was still alive.

“I breathed, I said the shehada,” he said, referring to the Muslim declaration of faith meant to put him right with God. “I tried to get up then started screaming because blood was coming out of me.”

He scraped his face on a rock to remove the blindfold and crawled to where some nearby residents found him.

Among them was a 22-year-old electrician who said he heard the gunfire early Monday and worried that people were being killed because he had discovered six bodies in the same spot a day earlier. He showed videos of the victims on his cell phone, their bodies piled atop each other covered in blood, some bearing large bruises that appeared to be from beatings. He said all had been shot dead.

He and others asked not to have their names published because they have to pass through government checkpoints to get home.

The killings shocked residents of Khaldiyeh, a working-class neighborhood on Aleppo’s northwest side that has seen little violence until now. While many residents support the rebels, they have not established a foothold in the area, and the relative quiet has drawn thousands of people fleeing violence in other Aleppo neighborhoods or nearby villages.

As Mahmoud spoke, a white pickup pulled up outside the field hospital with the bodies of nine of the men killed Monday. The body of the tenth victim had been taken away by his family. All still had their hands bound and two still wore blindfolds. Two had bullet wounds to their heads, and others had blood on their faces and chests or coming out of their ears. None wore shoes.

Those killings convinced one Khaldiyeh resident who helped collect the bodies that the neighborhood needs arms.

“We want the Free Army to come to our neighborhood to protect us,” he said. “If they can’t come, then they need to give us weapons so we can defend ourselves.”

The field hospital’s doctor, Mohammed Ajaj, said he is no longer shocked when the dead and wounded pass through town on their way to burial in nearby villages or for treatment across the northern border in Turkey.

“We’ve gotten used to it,” he said.

An 18-year-old activist who helped collect the bodies said none of them had IDs.

“We really know nothing about them,” he said, adding that he would stop in neighboring villages to see if anyone recognized them before delivering them to a morgue further north.

“If nobody claims them, we’ll take their photos and put them on our Facebook page so their families can find out that they’re dead,” he said.

#Syria ‘Flower of Damascus’ recalls the Assad regime’s brutality

Yaman Qadri, 19, was detained by Syrian forces and held in solitary confinement for 23 days. She endured physical torture on her first day in prison, and repeated threats.

Photograph by: ALLEN MCINNIS THE GAZETTE , The Gazette

Yaman Qadri, an enchanting-looking Syrian teenager, would like us, as part of the international community, to keep pressuring the Assad regime in Syria to open the door to freedom and democracy. She is speaking as someone who has experienced some of the worst excesses of the regime - attacked by its security thugs, beaten up, held in solitary confinement, threatened with death and forced to listen to other prisoners being tortured, night after long night.

A few days ago, Qadri, 19, arrived in Montreal, welcomed by family members who spent weeks last year in a torment of anxiety, not knowing whether she was alive or dead. She is here on a student visa. Last fall, word of her detention and disappearance spread across the Internet, provoking outrage, both at home and around the world. Online petitions were launched and Syrians, especially women, marched for the young woman they called the “flower of Damascus.”

At the time she was detained, Qadri was a secondyear medical student at the University of Damascus. “The centre of Damascus is relatively safe,” she said. “That meant we could all go to our classes in safety while people were being killed in other cities and even in the suburbs of Damascus.” She decided she should get involved in the protests.

She and three other students printed up thousands of flyers in red, green, white and blue, with slogans such as “Stop killing” and “Syria belongs to us, not the Assad family.” On Oct. 10, they took the flyers to the top floor of a four-storey medical lab building, taking care to choose one without any indoor cameras. State surveillance cameras appeared all over Syria’s cities once the uprising started.

Qadri watched as the brightly coloured flyers fell to the courtyard. “Students picked them up but as soon as they saw the anti-Assad slogans, they dropped them as fast as they could.”

Unfortunately for Qadri and her fellow students, the building they chose had outdoor cameras, allowing security guards to track them down. On Nov. 3, a day after students finally mounted a protest at the university, Qadri and a male student who was also involved in the flyer protest were detained by security guards and university staff.

“There were three women and three men,” Qadri said. “They took me into a small guardhouse and began hitting me and pushing me. I was screaming. I was scared. When another student protested, saying, ‘Why are you hitting her?’ they arrested him.”

Finally, an unmarked car came to get her. When she bent down to enter the car, she recoiled in fear. A man holding a large firearm was sitting in the back seat, staring at her. “I had no idea who they were, no idea where I was being taken. They told me I was being taken to a place where no one would find me. They told me I would never see my family again.”

That place turned out to be a security building, with cells in the basement. Her “interview” took place in an office. She sat on a plastic chair. Two men stood on either side of her and the interrogator sat across from her. When he didn’t like her answers, the men beside her hit her hard. She was also hit all over her body with an electric prod. As she was escorted, crying, back to her cell, she became aware of other prisoners, all men, praying for her, calling out words of encouragement.

She spent 23 days in another prison, her solitary cell between two interrogation rooms. The torture sessions started at 9 p.m. and lasted into the small hours of the morning. Qadri said she was terrified at first. She prayed for the men being tortured.

She herself was not physically harmed again after the first night. “I decided I did nothing wrong, so I told them the truth, that the flyers were my idea,” she said. “They couldn’t understand how an 18-year-old girl could have her own ideas,” Qadri said. “They kept trying to convince me that they were good people and that the people they were torturing were murderers and rapists. They couldn’t understand why people wanted freedom. ‘What is freedom to you?’ they kept asking.

“They hope that by torturing people they will make them renounce the uprising, but even after all the torture and the killings, people are not stopping. Even people who thought (Syrian president Bashar) Assad would reform the government have given up hope and joined the protests.”

All four of the students involved in the flyer protest were jailed: One student was for a day, Qadri for 23 days, a third student for a month and a fourth student for four months. Once she was released, Qadri’s parents insisted she leave Syria immediately.

Qadri is convinced the Assad regime will fall. “The wall of fear that kept it in place is down,” she said. “The feeling of generalized despair is gone. Young people feel they have an important role to play. I believe that we will win.”

04/26/12 #Syria Leaked video shows a woman and abductees being beaten and abused by Assad thugs

#Syria: Hospitals and doctors in firing line says Médecins Sans Frontières

As violence in Syria escalates to bloody new levels, human rights activists are claiming a hidden war is being fought – this time inside hospitals and medical facilities. WORDS: FRANKIE MULLIN

Last week, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was again ordered by the UN to halt its brutal crackdown, which included government troops pummelling the central city of Homs on Friday, killing at least 22 people.

However, for the survivors, it appears a similar fate may await. International medical humanitarian organisation Medécins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has spoken out to decry the militarisation of Syria’s hospitals.

MSF, which aims to provide medical aid ‘where it is most needed, regardless of race, religion, politics or gender’, and currently works in 60 countries, says Syrians injured by government troops are unable to go to hospital for fear of being arrested, tortured or even killed for opposing Assad’s rule. Medicine is being used as a “weapon of mass persecution”, in ways almost unprecedented in recent warfare, the organisation claims.

Watch video testimonies of injured Syrians, collected by MSF

“Doctors feel like they’re being hunted,” says Dr Greg Elder, a Kiwi ex-pat and MSF’s deputy director of operations in Paris. “Regardless of what happens in the wider political landscape, these things shouldn’t happen. Hospitals should be protected – that’s in the Geneva Convention.”

As violence escalates, so do the reports of blast traumas, sniper injuries, high-velocity gunshot wounds and soft tissue injuries and fractures caused by exploding bullets.

MSF is receiving a growing number of testimonies that the wounded are being beaten and killed as they lie in hospital beds, while others are left to die with festering wounds. Some simply disappear. The identities of those making the reports have been withheld over fears of retaliation by government troops.

One demonstrator who sought hospital treatment says: “All the doctors had been arrested and they were forced to sign a document saying they would only treat certain cases, the ones the government would allow.”

Others who have injuries consistent with taking part in a demonstration run a high risk of being arrested, or worse. “I was operated on under false identity because I am wanted by the security forces,” another injured man says. “Normally, under the worst circumstances, they might have removed a finger or just bandaged my hand but they knew I was from [location withheld] and they cut it off from the wrist.”

Another Syrian reports seeing a fellow patient killed by a member of Assad’s security forces as the man lay injured in a hospital bed. “A man in military gear – judging by his uniform, an officer – was crushing an injured person with his feet. In the end, the officer finished him off.”

For medical workers, the situation is dangerous and doctors know they are being watched, although Syrian authorites tell the outside world nothing untoward is happening. One response has been to set up underground clinics in homes, warehouses and apartments.

These makeshift hospitals are run with few supplies and only basic injuries can be treated. For most, the only hope is to be smuggled over the border to Lebanon or Jordan.

Although MSF has not been allowed direct access to the wounded in Syria, it is offering support to the proliferation of underground, mobile clinics springing up across the country. It’s a constant battle, however.

“The field hospitals change place every day. Several times [Assad’s troops] have come to take away or burn all the medical materials and supplies,” another Syrian recounts.

“There are no ambulances, they have all been targeted. They shoot at the passengers. The doctors who are brave enough to take action are arrested, or their wives are raped, or they are place under house arrest.”

In the clandestine medical shelters, simple rooms outfitted as operating theatres are used for surgical procedures. Hygiene and sterilisation conditions are rudimentary and aneasthesia is in short supply. Furthermore, the mere possession of drugs and basic medical materials, such as gauze, is considered a crime.

With most ambulances now under military control, another unofficial service has been set up by locals to scoop the beaten and bloodied from Syria’s streets.

The bravery of Syria’s medical professionals who continue to save lives while risking losing their own is awe-inspiring.

“When we receive serious casualties, we have two options: either we let them die, or we send them to hospital not knowing what will become of them,” says an anonymous Syrian medic. “Doctors are being harassed by security forces. But despite that risk, many are putting their lives in danger.”

With the situation so extreme, Elder admits the staying politically neutral is impossible, but also points to the saying ‘truth is the first casualty of war’.

“We know that the way the health service is being abused is just the tip of an iceberg, but the wider political context is much more complex that the picture that’s being painted.”

What is clear, however, is that medicine – and the humanitarian agencies that administer it – has become increasingly politicised, a frightening reality for those who are trained to help their fellow human beings, no matter what their political views are.

“Medical professionals have become a legitimate target,” Elder says. “That makes things dangerous for them. They are not soldiers; They are not trained to be on the front line.”

msf.org.uk

Pictures: Getty

Inside the torture chamber of Assad’s inquisition squads #Syria

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson in Damascus talks to an activist who survived 21 weeks’ interrogation by Syria’s security forces

It was a single egg that made Jolan, a 28-year-old activist, realise he was going survive Syria’s notorious torture chambers. He was blindfolded and locked in what he describes as a metal coffin, and each morning his tormentors would push a small piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg through a narrow opening by his head. But his cramped box – so short he could not straighten his legs – was tilted and his hands were bound, so for five days the egg would simply roll away and drop to the floor through a hole by his feet.

Days earlier, Jolan had been sitting in a park in Damascus on a sunny morning, waiting for a friend from the burgeoning protest movement aimed at forcing President Bashar al-Assad from power. Instead, about 30 regime security personnel surrounded him. Before he could even think about fleeing, a rifle butt to the back of the head knocked him out cold.

Trussed and forced to relieve himself where he lay, Jolan did not know how long he would be there. He did not know how he could survive. But he knew that somehow he must eat the egg. “So the fifth day,” he says, “I put my heel in this hole and I stopped the egg rolling out. I managed to push the egg all the way up my body to my mouth. It was filthy, it still had the shell on it, but I ate it and, when I did, I knew I was going to live.”

Jolan, who gave a pseudonym because he remains active in Syria’s protest movement, is one of thousands of political prisoners who human rights groups say have been thrown in jail by a regime determined to use its full force to crush the biggest threat to its rule since the Assad family took power 41 years ago.

From a secret location in Damascus, Jolan gave a detailed testimony to The Independent on Sunday of his torture during 21 weeks in detention. Although his full account is impossible to corroborate independently, Human Rights Watch, the international watchdog, confirmed that many of the torture techniques he described are commonplace. Many Syrian rights groups have also documented Jolan’s time in detention.

The regime has denied the allegations of torture in its prisons. Its spokesmen say they are fighting an armed uprising sponsored by Islamist groups. But Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than 100 people detained since the protests began in March last year, and the group has collected harrowing testimony of torture against children as young as 13 and of deaths in custody.

For Jolan, his seven days in the metal box was the first of dozens of humiliations and torments. Next, still blindfolded, he was put in a tiny room just one metre high, where he was forced to stand, bent double, for another seven days. Then his captors finally started to interrogate him.

“For eight hours a day they asked me everything about co-ordination, about the people of the revolution. They wanted to know how they worked, how they take the injured from place to place,” he says.

Jolan refused to talk, causing the torment to become even more cruel. He was given 50 lashes with a metal cable in the morning and 50 in the evening. He was then subjected to what Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch describes as the “dulab” method. A tyre is forced over the victim’s neck and his legs so he is folded forward. He is then tipped on his back, immobile, and beaten. Another day, Jolan says, he was suspended from the ceiling by a cable. On his 45th day in detention, they finally took the blindfold off. But Jolan was not prepared for the sight that greeted him. “When I opened my eyes, I could see two girls who were taken from the demonstrations. They were religious girls – usually they would wear the veil – but they were totally naked: the only item they were wearing was a blindfold,” he says. “From this moment, I started crying.”

With this image etched on his mind, he was taken back to the interrogation room and told that unless he talked, his mother and sister would be hauled in, also stripped naked and tortured in front of him. The UN report details similar “psychological torture, including sexual threats against them and their families”.

But still Jolan refused to talk. Exasperated, his captors transferred him to the Adra civilian prison in Damascus, where he was kept in filthy, cramped surroundings. Over the next few months he was called before a court to answer a litany of charges, including attacking the standing of the state, encouraging problems with minorities, going to a protest without a permit, and setting up an unlicensed field hospital. He was allowed a lawyer, but says his statements were ignored in the court. Jolan says he was saved only by pressure from some international human rights organisations. Eventually, towards the end of December, he was freed with a 1,000 Syrian pound (£11) fine.

Since then, he has continued his work, moving around by night to safe houses to collect supplies, trying to gather more crowds for the weekly demonstrations after Friday prayers. There are physical signs of his time behind bars – he is gaunt, and is missing four front teeth from the beatings. He chain smokes nervously. But he is determined to fight on. Fifteen days ago, the authorities told his uncle that Jolan must stop his activism or face “a bullet in the head”. So he switched mobile phone numbers and went underground for 10 days.

Mr Houry says: “Syria’s torture chambers belong to the Middle Ages. The security forces believe that by torturing people, including children, they will reinstate the wall of fear in Syria. But these torturers should know that their methods have only served to energise the protesters and that it is only a matter of time until they face accountability.”

Syrians flee to Jordan as violence escalates

Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan have described a dramatic escalation in violence and a mounting toll of dead and wounded in the southern city of Daraa and the country’s battered central region. Activists said 26 civilians were killed on Friday, many of them in the central city of Homs.

The fighting in Homs, coupled with fresh violence in Daraa, has triggered a new wave of wounded refugees crossing into Jordan. In the past two days, 170 families – around 850 people – have fled to Ramtha, seven miles from the border. Most were from Daraa. At the hospital in Ramtha, newly installed gates protect hospital rooms where wounded Syrians are being treated, guarded by Jordanian security police.

Syria has seen one of the bloodiest crackdowns since the wave of Arab uprisings began more than a year ago. The United Nations says that more than 5,400 people were killed last year, and the number of dead and injured continues to rise daily. In addition, 25,000 people are estimated to have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and more than 70,000 are internally displaced.

David Cameron has said Britain is sending food rations for 20,000 people and medical supplies for those affected by fighting in Homs and elsewhere. AP

GRAPHIC WARNING | #Syria | Yet another massacre in Idlib. At least 10 men tortured and executed. Some bludgeoned to death. via leaveobashar:

***VERY GRAPHIC*** YET ANOTHER MASSACRE IN IDLEB. AT LEAST 10 MEN - TORTURED AND EXECUTED. SOME BLUDGEONED TO DEATH. Idleb: Feb 16, 2012 - The story repeats itself over and over. Men are rounded up by Assad’s forces , then brutally tortured and finally taken to an open field and executed - hands tied. Some of them had their head smashed in.

Yesterday 38 people were killed by Assad’s forces in Idleb alone.

Please help these people. Please Donate to Syria Today via Avaaz.org

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/smuggle_hope_into_syria_f/?cl=1566181614&v=12501

#Syria: “YOU WANT FREEDOM? THIS IS YOUR FREEDOM! KNEEL DOWN TO BASHAR! WHO IS YOUR GOD? KISS YOUR GOD! YOU WANT FREEDOM?….”
A leaked video of a man being beaten & tortured whilst being forced to kneel down to a picture of bashar & state that he is his God while mocking the man for wanting freedom! via British Syrians & Friends in Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution

Graphic Warning: (01-06-12) Kafr Souseh | Damascus #Syria | Man beaten & stabbed repeatedly by Assad Forces

ALEPPO, #Syria: Arrival of reinforcements of security forces, the rebranded maintenance of order forces, ambulance, and fire brigade to the headquarters of Criminal Security Branch, after failed attempts by Anas Al-Shamy a member of parliament, who promised to release the girls an hour after the end of the sit-in. (The two girls were arrested for distributing flyers about the Dignity Strike in Forqan. About 400 - 500 people have been gathering and sitting in all day, demanding the release of the girls.) Latest reports that security have beaten and arrested some protestors.