The Non Governmental Organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch has addressed an open letter (http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/20/open-letter-leaders-syrian-opposition) to the Leaders of the Syrian Opposition, who have been linked to al-Qaeda, regarding numerous human rights abuses by armed opposition members. This is the same group that Senator McCain want the US to do air strikes in support of and Joe Lieberman wants to arm with weapons? This is also the group that President Obama claims are peaceful unarmed protesters seeking democracy?
The NGO says some of the attacks appear to have targeted President Bashar al-Assad’s own Alawite community and appear to be motivated by sectarianism.
“Kidnappings, torture, and even executions”, the New York based organization has cited videos posted and aired on the Internet apparently documenting these violations. This footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jmGL5y54VM&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLA2CD87866317C8A3 from January shows a group of Iranian nationals held in Homs by members of the Free Syrian Army.
They tell the camera they are soldiers sent from Tehran to back up loyalist forces in the crackdown ordered by the Damascus government. Iranian media has reported these were forced ‘confessions” made under duress, and the men were actually “engineers” working for an Iranian power company in Syria.
Dozens of online documents appear to testify to the crimes committed by certain armed opposition members, some of whom even resorted to brutal torture and killings.
In some videos posted on Youtube we see three men introduced as pro-regime militiamen confess to killing peaceful demonstrators; their hands are tied behind their backs and their faces are covered in wounds and swollen from beatings.
Human Rights Watch is urging all opposition forces to treat prisoners humanely. Something the group is ignoring?
The NGO says the Syrian government’s brutal tactics cannot justify abuses by armed opposition groups. Despite horrendous human rights abuses the Administration in Washington seeks to use the uprising to support its effort to overthrow the Assad regime. “This has nothing to do with wanted to the political aspirations of the people of Syria for freedom and democracy”, says Ian Moore of Charlotte. The Obama administration just wants to isolate Iran’s neighbor”, he said.
Meanwhile reports continue to surface that the United States Military and NATO are secretly training mercenaries and terrorists in camps in Libya and airlifting them to Turkey to infiltrate the border to commit terrorist acts, including targeted killings and launching attacks against police and government officials.
Russia has recently dispatched counterterrorism and other special operations troops to target al-Qaeda and try to prevent a takeover of the country by the hands of deadly terrorists. Some intelligence analyst suspect that the Russian are also in country to monitor the situation and protect its citizens. There are by some estimates about 100,000 Russian citizens in Syria. Russia also maintains a naval base in Syria. Source in Moscow say that an attack by the United States against Syria or the Russian naval base would be seen as an act of war and could lead to a military showdown between the United States and Russia. Russian diplomats note that they do not want a repeat of the Libyan situation where the US committed various war crimes including bombing civilian targets that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Nor do they want the US to arm terrorist groups in Syria like they did in Libya.
The US has claimed its intentions in Libya were morally "justified" to prevent the slaughter of innocent people. Russian sources point to the fact that the US bombed a water pipeline that provided fresh water to hundreds of thousands of people in an effort to increase the pressure on Muammar Gaddafi, who was brutally beaten and executed by Libyan terrorists armed by the United States.
Robert Tilford