Month: February 2017

Amnesty International maakte vorige week bekend, dat in de gevangenissen ‘van Assad’ mensen zijn vermoord, middels massa executies. Echter het bewijs voor die zaken ontbreekt…..

Amnesty ontpopt zich de laatste jaren meer en meer als een organisatie, die het uiterst agressieve neokolonialisme van de VS (met de NAVO aan de hand), steunt……. AI is een organisatie die ook op subsidie van overheden draait, dan wel bevolkt wordt door aankomende politici of ex-politici, tja, wiens brood men eet of at………

Waar was AI toen de ‘gematigde’, door het westen gesteunde terreurgroepen tekeer gingen op de straten en in de huizen van de bewoners in Oost-Aleppo?? Een terreur waarvan AI allang de getuigenissen had kunnen optekenen in Oost-Aleppo en de vluchtelingenkampen……..

Afgelopen woensdag op Information Clearing House het volgende artikel over de beschuldigingen van Amnesty International, geschreven door Moon of Alabama (onder het artikel kan u klikken voor een ‘Dutch’ vertaling, dit neemt wel wat tijd in beslag):

Amnesty
Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof

By
Moon Of Alabama

February
07, 2017 “Information
Clearing House”
– “Moon
Of Alabama” -A new Amnesty International report claims
that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners
in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy,
based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers
themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever
accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its
title “Human Slaughterhouse” down to the last paragraph.

But
the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the
anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range
Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The
Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report:
At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:

BEIRUT
(AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since
the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of
Damascus known to detainees as “the slaughterhouse,”
Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

How
does “at least 13,000” conforms to an already questionable
report which claims “13,000” as the top number of a very
wide range?

Here
is a link
to the report.

Before
we look into some details this from the “Executive Summary”:

From
December 2015 to December 2016, Amnesty International researched the
patterns, sequence and scale of violations carried out at Saydnaya
Military Prison (Saydnaya). In the course of this investigation, the
organization interviewed 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya, four
prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya, three
former Syrian judges, three doctors who worked at Tishreen Military
Hospital, four Syrian lawyers, 17 international and national experts
on detention in Syria and 22 family members of people who were or
still are detained at Saydnaya.

On the basis of evidence
from people who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya and
witness testimony from detainees, Amnesty International estimates
that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at
Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

There
are several difficulties with
this report.

1.           Most of the witnesses are identified as opposition figures and “former” officials who do not live in Syria. Some are said to have been remotely interviewed in Syria but it is not clear if those were living in government or insurgent held areas. Page 9:  

The
majority of these interviews took place in person in southern Turkey.
The remaining interviews were conducted by telephone or through other
remote means with interviewees still in Syria, or with individuals
based in Lebanon, Jordan, European countries and the USA.

It
is well known that the Syrian insurgency is financed with several
billion dollars per years from foreign state governments. It runs
sophisticated propaganda operations. These witnesses all seem to have
interests in condemning the Syrian government. Not once is an attempt
made to provide a possibly divergent view. Amnesty found the persons
it questioned by contacting international NGOs like itself and known
foreign financed opposition (propaganda) groups:

These
groups include Urnammu
for Justice and Human Rights, the Syrian Network for Human Rights,
and the Syrian Institute for Justice and Accountability.

2.         The numbers Amnesty provides are in a very wide range. None
are documented in lists or similar exhibits. They are solely based on
hearsay and guesstimates of two witnesses:

People
who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya told Amnesty
International that extrajudicial executions related to the crisis in
Syria first began in September 2011. Since that time, the frequency
with which they have been carried out has varied and increased. For
the first four months, it
was usual for between seven and 20 people
to be executed every
10-15 days.
For the following 11 months, between
20 and 50 people were
executed once a week, usually on Monday nights. For the subsequent
six months, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed once
or twice a week,
usually on Monday and/or Wednesday nights. Witness testimony from
detainees suggests that the executions were conducted at a similar –
or even higher – rate at least until December 2015. Assuming that
the death rate remained the same as the preceding period, Amnesty
International estimates that
between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at
Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.

From
“between x and y”, “once or twice a week”,
“suggests” and “assuming” the headline numbers
are simply extrapolated in footnote 40 in a 
back-of-the-envelope calculation; “If A were true then B would
be X”:

These
estimates were based on the following calculations. If between
seven and 20 were killed every 10-15 days from September to December
2011, the total figure would
be between
56 people and 240 people for that period. If between
20 and 50 were killed every week between January and November 2012,
the total figure would
be between
880 and 2,200 for that period. If between
20 and 50 people were killed in 222 execution sessions (assuming the
executions were carried out twice a week twice a month and once a
week once a month) between December 2012 and December 2015, the total
figure would
be between
4,400 and 11,100 for that period. These calculations produce a
minimum figure of 5,336, rounded down to the nearest thousand as
5,000, and 13,540, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 13,000.

3.         I will not go into the details of witness statements on which
the report is build. They seem at least exaggerated and are not
verifiable at all. In the end it is pure hearsay on which Amnesty
sets it conclusions. One example from page 25:

“Hamid”,
a former military officer when he was arrested in 2012, recalled the
sounds he heard at night during an execution:
“There was a
sound of something
being pulled out –
like a piece of wood, I’m
not sure –
and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled… If
you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of
gurgling. This
would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound
of people choking to death. This was normal for me then.”

A
court might accept ‘sound of “I’m not sure” “kind of
gurgling” noise through concrete’ as proof that a shower was
running somewhere. But as proof of executions?

Of
all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former
prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions
(page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they
have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something
they have been told of.

4.       The
numbers of people Amnesty claims were executed are – at best – a
wild ass guess. How come that Amnesty can name only very few of
those? On page 30 of its report it says:

Former
detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty
International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed
being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told
that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in
Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that
in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.

and:

Former
prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also
provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had
been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.

Those
95, some of whom may have been “executed” – or not, are the
only ones Amnesty claims to be able to name. That is less than 1-2%
of the reports central claim of 5,000 to 13,000 executed. All those
witnesses could provide no more details of persons allegedly killed?

Amnesty
acknowledges that its numbers are bogus. Under the headline
“Documented Deaths” on page 40 it then adds additional
names and numbers to those above but these are not from executions:

the
exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify.
However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared
with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died
in Saydnaya as
a result of torture and other ill-treatment between
March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time
of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were
members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for
this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36
additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other
ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty
International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their
cells

The
“Syrian Network for Human Rights” (SNHR)
is a group in the UK probably connected to British foreign
intelligence and with dubious monetary sources. It only says:

SNHR
funds its work and activities through unconditional grants and
donations from individuals and institutions.

Now
that is true transparency.

SNHR
is known for
rather ridiculous claims about casualties caused by various sides of
the conflict. It is not know what SNHR qualifies as civilians – do
these include armed civil militia? But note that none of the mostly
civilians SNHR claims to have died in the prison are said to have
been executed. How is it possible that a organization
frequently quoted in
the media as detailed source of casualties in Syria has no record of
the 5,000 to 13,000 Amnesty claims were executed?

5.        The
report is padded up with before/after satellite pictures of enlarged
graveyards in Syria. It claims that these expansions are a sign of
mass graves of government opponents.  But there is zero
evidence for that. Many people have died in Syria throughout the war
on all sides of the conflict. The enlargement, for example, of the
Martyrs Cemetery south of Damascus (p.29/30) is hardly a sign of
mass killing of anti-government insurgents. Would those be honored
as martyrs by the government side.

6.       The
report talks of “extrajudicially executed”
prisoners but then describes (military) court procedures and a
necessary higher up approval of the judgement. One may not like the
laws that govern the Syrian state but the courts and the procedures
Amnesty describes seem to follow Syrian laws and legal processes.
They are thereby – by definition – not extrajudicial 

7.        In its Executive Summary the Amnesty report says that “Death
sentences are approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria and …”.
But there is no evidence provided of “approval” by the
Grand Mufti in the details of the report. On page 19 it claims,
based on two former prison and court officials:

“The judgement is sent by military post to the Grand Mufti of
Syria and to either the Minister of Defence or the Chief of Staff of
the Army, who are deputized to sign for Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad and who specify the date of the execution”.

It
is very doubtful that the Syrian government would “deputize”
or even inform the Grand Mufti in cases of military or criminal legal
proceedings. Amnesty International may dislike the fact but Syria is
a secular state. The Grand Mufti in Syria is a civil legal authority
for some followers of the Sunni Muslim religion in Syria but he has
no official judiciary role. From the 2010 Swiss dissertation Models
of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and
Syria quoted here:

In
Syria a mufti is a legal and religious expert (faqih and ‘alim)
who has
the power to give legally non-binding recommendations (sing.
fatwa, pl. fatawa) in matters of Islamic law. 

…
Queries
which are either sought by a shari‘a judge or private
individuals regard
the personal status laws of the Muslim community only. In
the Arab Republic fatawa are given neither to public authorities nor
to individual civil servants, ..

Neither
the Syrian
constitution nor any Syrian law I can find refers to a role
of the Grand Mufti in any military or civil criminal court proceding.
The Amnesty claim “approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria”is
not recorded anywhere else. It is very likely false. The Grand Mufti,
Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, is a
moderate, recognized and
accomplished scholar. He should sue Amnesty for this slander.

Syrian
law includes a death penalty for certain severe and violent crimes.
Before 2011 actual executions in Syria were
very rare, most death sentences were commuted. Allegedly the laws
were amended in
late 2011, after the war in Syria had started, to include the death
penalty as possible punishment for directly arming terrorists.

It
is quite likely that the Syrian military and/or civil judiciary hand
out some death penalties against captured foreign and domestic
“rebels” it finds them guilty of very severe crimes. It is
fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other extreme groups well
known for mass murder and other extreme atrocities. It is likely that
some of those sentences are applied. But the Syrian government has
also provided amnesty to ten-thousands of “rebels” who
fought the government but have laid down their arms.

The
claims in the Amnesty report are based on spurious and biased
opposition accounts from outside of the country. The headline numbers
of 5,000 to 13,000 are calculated on the base of unfounded
hypotheticals. The report itself states that only 36 names of
allegedly executed persons are known to Amnesty, less than the number
of “witnesses” Amnesty claims to have interviewed. The high
number of claimed execution together with the very low number of
names is not plausible.

The
report does not even meet the lowest mark of scientific or legal
veracity. It is pure biased propaganda.

Note:
An earlier version of this piece mixed up the Syrian Network for
Human Rights (SNHR) and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
(SOHR). Both are registered in the UK and claim to provide accurate
casualty data from Syria. Only SNHR is referenced in this Amnesty
report.

Syria
carried out mass hangings at military prison: Amnesty International:
The Syrian government has executed up to 13,000 prisoners in mass
hangings and carried out systematic torture at a military jail near
Damascus, rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Click
for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French,
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Zie ook: ‘Amnesty claimt zonder bewijs 13.000 moorden middels massa executies in ‘gevangenis Assad………’ Deel 2‘

Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht aantreft.

PS: in de kop stond per abuis ‘gevangenissen’, waar ‘gevangenis’ moet staan, hersteld op 21 februari 2017.