02-07-2017, 11:06 PM
*** 8-Feb-17 World View -- Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad
****
![[Image: g170207b.jpg]](http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170207b.jpg)
Each week, up to 50 people at the Saydnaya prison were taken out of their prison cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, then hanged (AFP)
Just when you think you know all the depraved atrocities that Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad has committed, new evidence leaks out that
shows even more grotesque actions by this psychopathic killer and war
criminal.
These actions began in 2011, when there were thousands of people
peacefully demonstrating against al-Assad. They took place in secret
in Saydnaya Prison, a facility that al-Assad turned into a "human
slaughterhouse," according to Amnesty International, based on
interviews with 84 people, including 31 former inmates, four former
guards, three former judges and three doctors. Thousands of these
peaceful demonstrators were brought to Saydnaya for extreme torture
and execution.
The prisoners were people who were perceived to oppose the government
in some way. They came from all sectors of Syrian society. Many are
demonstrators, long-time political dissidents, human rights defenders,
journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers and students.
According to one former inmate, they were tortured from the moment
they arrived:
> [indent]<QUOTE>"You are thrown to the ground and they use different
> instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper
> wire ends — they have little hooks so they take a part of your
> skin — normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different
> sizes and metal bars. Also they have created what they call the
> “tank belt”, which is made out of tire that has been cut into
> strips. ... They make a very specific sound; it sounds like a
> small explosion. I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try
> to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of
> others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is
> happening. You’re in shock. But then the pain comes."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Prisoners are stripped naked and thrown into cells for months.
Prisoners were severely beaten regularly. Prisoners were forced to
rape each other. There were starved and given little food and water.
The only escape was death, with regular mass hangings of up to 50 at a
time. At least 17,723 people were killed in government custody
between March 2011 and December 2015, an average of 300 deaths each
month.
As far as is known, these actions are still going on today, in
Saydnaya and other Syria prisons.
This is not the first time al-Assad's horrors have leaked out into the
public. In 2014, an al-Assad defector supplied 55,000 photos of about
11,000 men whom al-Assad had tortured using electrocution,
eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a
massive "industrial strength" scale. Al-Assad was so pleased and
proud of this torture that he made sure each act was photographed.
Throughout my lifetime, I've heard people describe the Holocaust and
say, "Never again!" But al-Assad is a man who gets obvious pleasure
from gouging out people's eyes or pulling out their fingernails, or
sending missiles into school dormitories to kill children, or dropping
barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and
chemical weapons on civilian neighborhoods, or using Sarin gas to kill
large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be
cockroaches to be exterminated. Bashar al-Assad is the greatest
genocidal monster in today's world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao
Zedong and Stalin from the last century. There is no mass weapon of
destruction, nor any gruesome form of torture, that he won't use to
satisfy his psychopathy. Amnesty International and CNN and Vox
Related Articles
****
**** Epicenter of Syrian conflict moves from Aleppo to Idlib and al-Bab
****
The destruction of East Aleppo was supposed to be the shock and awe
that brought Syria's civil war to an end, but that hasn't happened
yet. Tens of thousands of residents of Aleppo have fled to Idlib,
which is now being controlled by a combination of "moderate"
anti-Assad rebels, fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS or
ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and and fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra
(al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS).
Once again you have air strikes killing civilians. Although the air
strikes appear to be from Russian warplanes, once again you have
Russia denying that it's conducting air strikes. In Aleppo that would
have meant that Syria's warplanes were conducting the airstrikes, but
in Idlib there's the complication that US warplanes are attacking ISIS
targets.
There's also continued fighting in northern Syria, led by Turkey's
Operation Euphrates Shield. The fighting is now centered around the
city of al-Bab. At the beginning of the operation in August of last
year, the main fighters were the Free Syrian Army (FSA) of "moderate"
anti-Assad rebels. But now in al-Bab, it's elite Turkish army
fighters leading the effort, supported by Turkish fighter jets.
This situation is a time bomb for several reasons:
BBC
and AP and Al Jazeera
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Saydnaya Prison,
Amnesty International, Aleppo, Idlib, al-Bab,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Operation Euphrates Shield, Kurds, People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Turkey, Russia, Iran, Free Syrian Army, FSA
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad
- Epicenter of Syrian conflict moves from Aleppo to Idlib and al-Bab
****
**** Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria's Bashar al-Assad
****
Each week, up to 50 people at the Saydnaya prison were taken out of their prison cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, then hanged (AFP)
Just when you think you know all the depraved atrocities that Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad has committed, new evidence leaks out that
shows even more grotesque actions by this psychopathic killer and war
criminal.
These actions began in 2011, when there were thousands of people
peacefully demonstrating against al-Assad. They took place in secret
in Saydnaya Prison, a facility that al-Assad turned into a "human
slaughterhouse," according to Amnesty International, based on
interviews with 84 people, including 31 former inmates, four former
guards, three former judges and three doctors. Thousands of these
peaceful demonstrators were brought to Saydnaya for extreme torture
and execution.
The prisoners were people who were perceived to oppose the government
in some way. They came from all sectors of Syrian society. Many are
demonstrators, long-time political dissidents, human rights defenders,
journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers and students.
According to one former inmate, they were tortured from the moment
they arrived:
> [indent]<QUOTE>"You are thrown to the ground and they use different
> instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper
> wire ends — they have little hooks so they take a part of your
> skin — normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different
> sizes and metal bars. Also they have created what they call the
> “tank belt”, which is made out of tire that has been cut into
> strips. ... They make a very specific sound; it sounds like a
> small explosion. I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try
> to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of
> others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is
> happening. You’re in shock. But then the pain comes."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Prisoners are stripped naked and thrown into cells for months.
Prisoners were severely beaten regularly. Prisoners were forced to
rape each other. There were starved and given little food and water.
The only escape was death, with regular mass hangings of up to 50 at a
time. At least 17,723 people were killed in government custody
between March 2011 and December 2015, an average of 300 deaths each
month.
As far as is known, these actions are still going on today, in
Saydnaya and other Syria prisons.
This is not the first time al-Assad's horrors have leaked out into the
public. In 2014, an al-Assad defector supplied 55,000 photos of about
11,000 men whom al-Assad had tortured using electrocution,
eye-gouging, strangulation, starvation, and beating on prisoners on a
massive "industrial strength" scale. Al-Assad was so pleased and
proud of this torture that he made sure each act was photographed.
Throughout my lifetime, I've heard people describe the Holocaust and
say, "Never again!" But al-Assad is a man who gets obvious pleasure
from gouging out people's eyes or pulling out their fingernails, or
sending missiles into school dormitories to kill children, or dropping
barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and
chemical weapons on civilian neighborhoods, or using Sarin gas to kill
large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be
cockroaches to be exterminated. Bashar al-Assad is the greatest
genocidal monster in today's world, comparable to Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao
Zedong and Stalin from the last century. There is no mass weapon of
destruction, nor any gruesome form of torture, that he won't use to
satisfy his psychopathy. Amnesty International and CNN and Vox
Related Articles
- US increasingly expresses total disgust with Syria regime for Bashar al-Assad's atrocities (21-Sep-2016)
- Western leaders sickened by Assad's 'industrial strength' torture in Syria (22-Jan-2014)
- Syria's air force deliberately targets hospital in Aleppo, killing dozens (29-Apr-2016)
- From 2013: The history of how Syria's Bashar al-Assad created ISIS (07-Sep-2016)
****
**** Epicenter of Syrian conflict moves from Aleppo to Idlib and al-Bab
****
The destruction of East Aleppo was supposed to be the shock and awe
that brought Syria's civil war to an end, but that hasn't happened
yet. Tens of thousands of residents of Aleppo have fled to Idlib,
which is now being controlled by a combination of "moderate"
anti-Assad rebels, fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS or
ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and and fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra
(al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS).
Once again you have air strikes killing civilians. Although the air
strikes appear to be from Russian warplanes, once again you have
Russia denying that it's conducting air strikes. In Aleppo that would
have meant that Syria's warplanes were conducting the airstrikes, but
in Idlib there's the complication that US warplanes are attacking ISIS
targets.
There's also continued fighting in northern Syria, led by Turkey's
Operation Euphrates Shield. The fighting is now centered around the
city of al-Bab. At the beginning of the operation in August of last
year, the main fighters were the Free Syrian Army (FSA) of "moderate"
anti-Assad rebels. But now in al-Bab, it's elite Turkish army
fighters leading the effort, supported by Turkish fighter jets.
This situation is a time bomb for several reasons:
- The US considers the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)
to be allies and an effective fighting force against ISIS, but Turkey
considers them to be linked to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK).
- Turkey's forces now effectively control a region of northern Syria
along Turkey's border, and has made it clear that it has no intention
of leaving. Syria's government is demanding that Turkey
withdraw.
- Despite the détente that Russia and Iran have arranged between
Syria's al-Assad and Turkey, al-Assad's Shia/Alawite forces and
Turkey's Sunni forces are still historic enemies.
BBC
and AP and Al Jazeera
Related Articles
- Syria and Russia see 'the light at the end of the tunnel' after Aleppo victory (18-Dec-2016)
- Turkey's 'Operation Euphrates Shield' turns into full-scale invasion of Syria (26-Aug-2016)
- Turkey views Iraq and Syria through the lens of World War I and the Ottoman Empire (20-Oct-2016)
- Turkey, Syria, Kurds, ISIS converge on a major military confrontation in al-Bab (26-Nov-2016)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Saydnaya Prison,
Amnesty International, Aleppo, Idlib, al-Bab,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Operation Euphrates Shield, Kurds, People’s Protection Units, YPG,
Turkey, Russia, Iran, Free Syrian Army, FSA
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
