Syria conflict: Rebels may have committed war crime - UN
BBC News online - 2 November 2012
The video allegedly shows the shooting of government soldiers by Syrian rebels
Syrian
rebels have been accused of possibly committing a war crime after a
video allegedly showing the shooting of government soldiers appeared
online.
Footage apparently shows the rebels beating soldiers before shooting them.
Unconfirmed reports say troops have now quit all bases near the strategic northern town of Saraqeb.
The town lies near both the main Damascus-Aleppo highway and the highway linking Aleppo to the coastal city of Latakia - making it doubly strategic.
The army, meanwhile, continued its air strikes across Syria on Thursday.
Amnesty International"This shocking footage... demonstrates an utter disregard for international humanitarian law by the armed group in question”
In all, more than 150 people
reportedly died in fighting, said the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights (SOHR), a UK-based activist group.
The claim has not been independently verified.
In a separate development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Arab League Secretary General Nabil el-Araby would meet in Cairo on Sunday to discuss the Syrian crisis, the Arab League announced.
The alleged shootings took place after the rebels overran the strategic army checkpoints between on Thursday.
Recent alleged rebel atrocities
- 22 June - Damascus accuses 'terrorists' of killing 25 villagers in northern Syria and mutilating their bodies
- 6 July - footage shows a rebel questioning a soldier before shooting him - location unknown
- 1 Aug - four apparent Assad loyalists are seen put against the wall and shot in public in Aleppo
- 14 Aug - rebels are shown in a video throwing dead bodies of government snipers from an Aleppo roof
- 17 Sept - armed opposition groups are accused by Human Rights Watch of torturing and summarily executing detainees in Aleppo, Latakia, and Idlib
The video purportedly shows
agitated rebels kicking and pushing the soldiers to the ground inside
one of the seized buildings. Shots are then seen fired into the cowering
mass of bodies.
Spokesman Rupert Colville added that the video - if proved to be genuine - would almost certainly form part of a future prosecution.
Meanwhile, Amnesty said in a statement: "This shocking footage depicts a potential war crime in progress, and demonstrates an utter disregard for international humanitarian law by the armed group in question."
But it is alleged that an extremist Islamist group, the al-Nusra front, was responsible, the BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon reports.
For months, activists have reported similar summary executions by regime forces virtually every day.
But there has been mounting evidence of similar tactics being used by some rebel groups too, although many have signed a code of practice banning such abuses, our correspondent says.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier warned that radical Islamist fighters were trying to hijack the Syrian revolution.
The comments have drawn an angry response from some opposition leaders, who say that it is the failure of the outside world to support the uprising with practical help that has left the field open to the radicals.
The SOHR more than 36,000 people have been killed since protests against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March 2011.
The SOHR is one of the most prominent organisations documenting and reporting incidents and casualties in the Syrian conflict. It says its reports are impartial, though its information cannot be independently verified.
Labels: Conflict, Crime, Human Relations, Human Rights, Revolution, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 02, 2012
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