By Stephen Gowans
BELOW: CBS News, typical of the American media, who slavishly follow cues from the White House, the State Department or intelligence sources, was busy spreading the “news” about Syrian government torture. It’s also instructive to see the (many) reactionary and obviously Zionist-written comments. The Appendix has CBS’ own transcript of the event.
A report sponsored by one of the Syrian insurgency’s major weapons suppliers claims to provide (as the New York Times puts it) “new visual corroboration that Mr. Assad’s government is guilty of mass war crimes against its own citizens.” Based on photos of dead detainees said to be taken by a defector from the Syrian military, the report alleges that Syrian forces engaged in widespread torture.
While the allegations may be true, there is considerable room for skepticism.
First, and foremost, the photographs on which the report is based have not been independently verified.
Second, the driving force behind the report is Qatar, which has been energetically engaged in efforts to bring down the Syrian government. Part of that effort has been to supply Syrian and foreign jihadists– themselves the target of torture accusations–with arms.
Third, there are three reasons the Qatari emirate might have an interest in traducing the Syrian government with phony allegations.
• To strengthen assertions that Assad must step down, preventing any deal at the Geneva II conference that might leave him in place.
• To provide a pretext for direct intervention by Western military forces into the Syrian conflict.
• To divert attention from the brutal war crimes (including mass executions, beheadings and eviscerations) carried out by the insurgents, now under investigation by Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights chief.
Of course, we can’t be sure that the financing of the torture allegations report is a stratagem to gain the upper hand in the Syrian conflict, but as The New York Times acknowledges in an understatement, the funding of the project by one of the insurgents’ principal backers is “likely to raise questions.”
Indeed.
About the Author
Stephen Gowans is a leading Canadian activist and founder of What’s Left.
APPENDIX
CBS News Transcript
A day before Wednesday’s Syria peace conference in Switzerland, a new report by former war crimes prosecutors contains photographic evidence that seems to show a mass killing by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
According to the report, some of the victims were beaten, some were strangled, and others were starved.
One of the report’s authors described it as killing on an industrial scale.
The pictures come from a defector who worked for Syria’s military police as a photographer. He told investigators his job was to photograph the bodies of dead prisoners after they were taken to a military hospital.Thousands of his images were examined by an international legal and forensic team who found his account believable, and concluded there is “clear evidence… of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian Government.”
They estimate the photographs document the torture and execution of 11,000 people over a two and a half year period during the Syrian conflict.
CBS News cannot independently verify the images. The report was funded by the Qatari Government, which supports the Syrian opposition. But the authors are experienced former war crimes prosecutors, including Sir Desmond De Silva.
“This has all the hallmarks of ordered… deliberate.. merciless execution, by a whole variety of unpleasant means,” De Silva said.
Both the Syrian army and the rebels have been accused of atrocities during thecountry’s civil war, which they have been fighting now for nearly three years.
But the scale of the torture and executions alleged in this report is unprecedented.
