HRW releases report on Syrian torture

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released video testimony from two Syrians who allege they witnessed pro-government militias torturing and executing civilians. Syrian security forces have summarily executed over 100 civilians and wounded or captured opposition fighters in recent attacks on opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, the report has claimed. "In Cold Blood" documents more than a dozen incidents involving at least 101 victims since late 2011, many of them in March 2012, in which Syrians were killed in cold blood by security forces and pro-government militiamen. The video comes as the first deadline for the implementation of the United Nation's ceasefire plan approaches. The rights group distributed the testimony from a Syrian man who alleged he witnessed pro-government militias torturing and executing two men in a public square. "We were in Deia when the army and the shabiha [pro-government militias] arrived. They gathered us in the square. They brought two men, they were blindfolded with their hands and feet attached with a plastic cable. They had marks of torture on their bodies. They took them into the square and said that these people were from a terrorist group, they said that in front of the people of Dei'a. "And in front of us, they started to beat them with the butt of their Kalashnikovs. They started beating their bodies, their legs, and their heads. After they tortured them and all that, a general and a lieutenant-general came and gave the order to open fire on the soldiers dissenting from the Syrian army. They started to shoot at them," said Khaled, a 27-year-old resident of Kherbet al-Jouz - a Syrian village close to the Turkish border - who had fled into Turkey. In another video testimony, a Syrian opposition fighter called Ali reported the shelling of a roundabout, in which six people were killed instantly and the two wounded were executed. "A shell was dropped on al Dabbit roundabout. There were eight people, six were killed right away. I was watching through binoculars. Six died right away and two were still alive. They were executed by soldiers on foot, they urinated on them, they shot them, the tanks drove over them and started approaching us," Ali said. The exact number of victims of the extrajudicial executions is impossible to verify given the difficulties of accessing and evaluating the information from Syria. At least 85 victims were described by witnesses as residents who did not take part in the fighting, including women and children. The report describes in detail several cases of mass executions of local residents, including the killing of at least 13 men at the Bilal mosque in Idlib on March 11, 2012; the execution of at least 25 men during a search and arrest operation in the Sultaniya neighborhood of Homs on March 3, 2012; and the killings of at least 47 people, mainly women and children, in the 'Adwiyya, Karm al-Zaytoun and Refa'i neighborhoods of Homs on March 11-12, 2012. HRW said the UN security council should demand that Syria ends "widespread human rights abuses", authorise deployment of monitors to supervise compliance with Kofi Annan's peace pla, refer the situation in Syria to the international criminal court and secure access for humanitarian missions. It also lists a series of recommendations to all countries, the Arab League, Russia and China specifically and the Syrian government.