Middle East mega thread (WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES.)

iraniam · Mar 24, 2012

Iran helping Assad to put down protests: officials

(Reuters) - Iran is providing a broad array of assistance to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to help him suppress anti-government protests, from high-tech surveillance technology to guns and ammunition, U.S. and European security officials say.
Tehran's technical assistance to Assad's security forces includes electronic surveillance systems, technology designed to disrupt efforts by protesters to communicate via social media, and Iranian-made drone aircraft for overhead surveillance, the officials said. They discussed intelligence matters on condition of anonymity.

Iran has also provided lethal materiel that can be used for riot control, they said.

"Over the past year, Iran has provided security assistance to Damascus to help shore up Assad. Tehran during the last couple of months has been aiding the Syrian regime with lethal assistance - including rifles, ammunition, and other military equipment - to help it put down the opposition," a U.S. official said.

"Iran has provided Damascus (with) monitoring tools to help the regime suppress the opposition. It has also shared techniques on Internet surveillance and disruption," the official continued.

He added that Iran had also provided Assad's government with "unarmed drones that Damascus is using along with its own technology to monitor opposition forces."

Iranian security officials have also traveled to Damascus to advise Assad's entourage how to counter dissent, the official said. Some Iranian officials have stayed on in Syria to advise Assad's forces, he added.

Iran's multi-pronged security aid to Syria appears to have helped Assad's government in its increasingly violent campaign to hold on to power in the face of a year-long protest movement. The United Nations estimates 8,000 civilians have died in the conflict.

NO GAME CHANGER

However, the U.S. and European officials said the Syrian government's survival is not totally dependent on continuing help from Tehran.

U.S. and allied official broadly agree that Assad's control remains solid. His opponents are hopelessly disorganized, the officials said, which may make it possible for the Syrian president and his entourage to hold onto power for years.

"At current levels Iranian aid is important but not really a game changer in the overall conflict," a U.S. official noted.

Iran has for decades been a patron to Syria, which has helped funnel aid and weapons to the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

During the protests that followed Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election - the biggest mass protests since the Islamic Republic's founding in 1979 - Iranian authorities disrupted social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as cell phone networks.

Iran's internal crackdown reportedly has escalated since then.

A European official said that the Iranians were providing Syrian security agencies with hardware and software that would help them disrupt efforts to organize protests inside Syria and efforts by anti-government elements to spread their message to supporters outside the country.

Officials said that Syria had also obtained some surveillance technology from European suppliers.

As protests against Assad's rule grew last year, the United States first raised the possibility that Iranian authorities were helping their Syrian counterparts suppress dissent.

Last June the U.S. Treasury Department announced economic sanctions against two of Iran's most senior police officials for allegedly helping Assad's government crush protests.

The Treasury imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam and Ahmad-Reza Radan, chief and deputy chief of Iran's national police force, because their agency had "provided support to the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate and dispatched personnel to Damascus in April to assist the Syrian government in suppressing the Syrian people."

The Treasury alleged that Radan had traveled to Damascus to meet with Syrian security agencies, to whom he allegedly provided "expertise to aid in the Syrian government crackdown on the Syrian people."

DRONE DEBATE

U.S. officials said Iranian efforts to bolster Syria's surveillance capabilities have been supplemented by deliveries to Syria of Iranian-made unarmed surveillance drone aircraft.

Earlier this month a specialized website, The Aviationist, reported that a drone flying over the city of Homs, the site of recent violent clashes between government and opposition forces, had been identified as a "Pahpad" drone, which the website said meant "remotely piloted aircraft" in Farsi.

In February another specialized website, Open Source GEOINT, published freeze-frame images from what purported to be an amateur cameraman's video of a suspected drone flying over a Damascus suburb.

The website noted that some news reports had suggested that the United States was flying intelligence drones over Syria but that the drone in the pictures did not appear to be a U.S. model.

The website cited speculation that the drone might be of Iranian origin. Ynet News, an Israeli website, reported this month that Syria's defense industry produces drones that are technologically identical to Iranian-produced models and speculated that these domestically produced models were what Syrian security forces had deployed.

However, a U.S. official said that some of Syria's drones had come directly from Iran.

Last weekend the Iranian news agency Fars announced that Iranian experts had produced what it called a "new type of drone" known as the Shaparak, or "Butterfly," which it said was "capable of carrying out military and border patrol missions."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/24/us-iran-syria-crackdown-idUSBRE82M18220120324

iraniam · Mar 25, 2012

The death of a 32-year-old Iraqi woman, who was found at home severely beaten in the head with a note telling her to “go back to your country you terrorist”, has caused shock across a country still reeling from the death of a young black man in a hate crime in Philadelphia.

Shaima Alwadi was taken off life support on Saturday, four days after the crime occurred in her home in San Diego, California. The mother of five is believed to have been beaten to death by a tire iron according to her 17-year-old daughter who was interviewed by a local TV channel. In the video that has gone viral on social media, the young girl makes an emotional plea and asks why her mother was taken away from her.

Mrs. Alwadi had received a similar note earlier at home but she dismissed it as a prank.

Shaima Alawadi
“A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that,” Lt. Mark Coit was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.”

Alwadi’s death comes at a time where the death of a young black unarmed man, Tayvon Martin, shot by a white security guard of a gated community in Philadelphia, has unleashed a storm on race issues in the United States.
The marches across the country on Friday were dubbed “Million Hoodie Marches” in honor of the 17-year-old Martin who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot last month. Demonstrators said the death is a reminder of the discrimination that takes place against blacks by law enforcers.

Martin was on his way home from the grocers when he was spotted by security guard George Zimmerman who called the police to report what he said was a suspicious man on drugs. Despite being told by the police to stay where he was, Zimmerman followed Martin and claims to have shot him in self-defense.

Martin’s girlfriend, who was on the phone with him, however, says that she heard Martin being shoved to the ground and cries for help before shots rang out.

Zimmerman has avoided prosecution due to his claim of self-defense reported the Telegraph on Saturday. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

U.S. President Barack Obama weighed in on the controversy on Friday urging people to “soul search” as he called for a thorough investigation into the case and described Martin as his son.

“I think every parent in America should be able to under-stand why it is absolutely imperative to investigate every aspect of this and that every-body pulls together - federal, state and local - to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened,” he said. “I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen.

“And that means we examine the laws, the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.”

His words will provide little solace to the parents of Martin or family of Mrs. Alwadi still in shock over her tragic death.

The parallels between Martin’s death and Alwadi’s are easy to make and not lost on social media platforms where analogies between both victims, killed for wearing a hoodie and hijab respectively, are being made.

For Mrs. Alwadi, there is much grief being expressed as can be evidenced with the hashtag #ripShaima as they tried to come to terms with the notion that a woman could be killed in the U.S. for wearing a hijab.

The note’s threatening element of “return to your country” has caused equal amounts of outrage, with many people across social media scoffing at the notion since the basis of the United States centers on migrants.

One Twitter user by the handle XChristelle wrote: “’Return to your country’? The USA is composed of migrants who massacred a people to steal their land. Who must return now?”

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/25/203047.html

iraniam · Mar 25, 2012

EL CAJON, Calif. — A 32-year-old woman from Iraq who was found severely beaten next to a threatening note saying "go back to your country" died on Saturday.

Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he met with Shaima Alawadi's family members in the morning and was told that she was taken off life support around 3 p.m.

"The family is in shock at the moment. They're still trying to deal with what happened," Mohebi said.
Alawadi, a mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family's house in El Cajon, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.

The daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said "go back to your country, you terrorist."

Addressing the camera, the tearful daughter asked: "You took my mother away from me. You took my best friend away from me. Why? Why did you do it?"

Police said the family had found a similar note earlier this month but did not report it to authorities.
Al Himidi told KGTV-TV her mother dismissed the first note, found outside the home, as a child's prank.

A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told UT San Diego () that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school. Alzaidy told the newspaper the family is from Iraq, and that Alawadi is a "respectful modest muhajiba," meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf. http://bit.ly/GYbfB7
Investigators said they believe the assault is an isolated incident.

"A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that," Lt. Mark Coit said. "We don't want to focus on only one issue and miss something else."

The family had lived in the house in San Diego County for only a few weeks, after moving from Michigan, Alzaidy said. Alzaidy told the newspaper her father and Alawadi's husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.

Mohebi said the family had been in the United States since the mid-1990s.
He said it was unfortunate that the family didn't report the initial threatening note.
"Our community does face a lot of discriminatory, hate incidents and don't always report them," Mohebi said.

"They should take these threats seriously and definitely call local law enforcement."
El Cajon, northeast of downtown San Diego, is home to some 40,000 Iraqi immigrants, the second largest such community in the U.S. after Detroit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/shaima-alawadi-dead_n_1377724.html

xenubarb · Mar 25, 2012

How interesting that our local paper, just bought by a rich conservative, did not even mention this story last week.

Anonymous · Mar 25, 2012

If a Black man were attacked for wearing a kufi, or a Jew for wearing a yarmulke, this would be a hate crime.
I don't quite see the difference here.

iraniam · Mar 26, 2012

Syria replies to Annan peace plan as Homs is shelled again

In a sign of growing anxiety about the security situation, the Syrian authorities have banned men of military age from leaving the country. (Reuters)

Syria has formally responded to a peace plan put forward by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, his office said on Monday, but gave no details about the message.

“Mr. Annan is studying it and will respond very shortly,” his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement from Geneva.

Annan, who presented Damascus with his peace proposals earlier this month, said on Monday the crisis could not carry on forever, but added that he had not set any deadline for a resolution of the conflict.

“It is not practical to put forth timetables and timelines when you haven’t got agreement from the parties,” Annan told journalists in Moscow, where he met on Sunday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

“This cannot be allowed to drag on indefinitely and, as I have told the parties on the ground, they cannot resist the transformational winds that are blowing,” he added before flying off for top level meetings in China on Tuesday.

Annan’s six-point peace proposal calls for a ceasefire, political dialogue between the government and opposition, and full humanitarian access for aid agencies.

Both Russia and China have previously vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions highly critical of Damascus, drawing accusations from critics in the West that they were giving Assad a license to kill.

However, Moscow and Beijing have given full public backing to Annan’s mission and the veteran diplomat is seeking assurances from both capitals that they will bring pressure to bear on Assad to comply with his demands.
Embassies closed
Meanwhile Turkey and Norway closed their embassies in Syria, further isolating President Bashar al-Assad whose forces bombarded the battered city of Homs with mortars in an effort to quell unrest.

Following the example of many Arab and Western states, Turkey said it had suspended all activities at its embassy as the security situation worsened.

Once a close ally of Assad, Turkey has denounced his efforts to crush the rebellion and has thrown its weight behind his opponents, announcing on Sunday that it would work with Washington to provide “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian opposition

Video showed towering flames and thick black smoke billowing from at least two locations in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, which has become the epicenter for the year-long revolt. Residents accused the army of indiscriminate shelling.

“Every day the shelling goes on. The regime is wiping out the city,” said Waleed Faris, an activist who lives in Homs.

Sixteen people died in clashes around the country, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said, with eight dying in the central city of Homs, a rebel stronghold that has become the epicenter of the year-long uprising.
Fighting near border
Syria says it is battling foreign-backed terrorist groups and the official news agency Sana reported on Monday that troops had foiled an attempt by a group of armed infiltrators trying to enter across the Turkish border near the village of Darkoush.

It said an unknown number were killed and injured. Activists said two Algerian men with British nationality came under fire in the area; one was killed and another injured.

There were conflicting reports on whether they were journalists or if they had joined the rebel fighters.

In Harasta, a town near the capital Damascus, rebels attacked a military bus and killed three soldiers, the SOHR said, citing its network of activists inside Syria.

Heavy clashes in the province of Hama also continued, activists said. They uploaded footage of grey smoke billowing out of an old castle amid the crackling sound of gunfire in the town of Qalaat al-Madyaq, believed to be in rebel hands.

Videos and reports from inside Syria are impossible to verify as the government has restricted access to journalists and human rights workers.

Sana news agency said soldiers had killed “six of the most dangerous wanted terrorists” in a raid in the southern province of Deraa. They also thwarted a bid to blow up the al-Najih Bridge on the Damascus-Deraa highway, it said.

Security appears to be fraying in many parts of Syria despite repeated army offensives to regain rebellious territory. Activists said the government was struggling to hold such areas for long, with rebels swiftly re-emerging, as they have in Homs.

In a sign of growing anxiety about the security situation, the Syrian authorities have banned men of military age from leaving the country, Lebanese officials said on Monday.

The restrictions, issued on Saturday, require men between the age of 18 and 42 to get permission from military recruitment and immigration departments before travelling, the sources said, adding that border traffic at the main crossing between Beirut and Damascus had fallen by 60 percent since the regulation.
Opposition to meet
Syrian opposition factions will meet again in Istanbul on Tuesday to agree on common objectives for their nation’s future ahead of a “Friends of Syria” conference, they said Monday.

Informal discussions have been taking place in a hotel on the outskirts of Turkey’s largest city since Sunday, though talks start officially on Tuesday, said Ahmed Kamel, spokesman for the Syrian National Council.

Syria’s fragmented opposition has struggled to remain united in the face of Assad’s crackdown.

The first “Friends of Syria” meeting was held in Tunis in late February, with participation from about 60 countries, including Western and Arab nations. The next meeting takes place in Istanbul on Sunday.

Kamel said Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, was expected to attend the conference opening.

Qatar holds the presidency of the Arab League and al-Thani has said he was in favor of delivering arms to Syrian opposition soldiers battling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Kamel said most key opposition groups would attend the talks: Kurds, Syrian Turks, Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, hardline Salafists and others.

However, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, which fears escalating militarization of the conflict, has refused to attend.

Prominent opposition figure Michel Kilo also was not expected not attend.

Monitors say at least 9,100 people have been killed in Syria since anti-regime protests broke out last year.

“The objective of the meeting is to make a solemn declaration on the civil future of Syria if the regime falls,” Kamel said. “Syria won’t be a state ruled by soldiers or by religious people.”

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/26/203373.html

iraniam · Mar 27, 2012

Family of murdered Iraqi-American woman recounts story of brutal attack

In their first interview with the media, the family of Iraqi-American woman Shaima Alwadi, who was beaten to death in San Diego, decided to break their silence and recount the details of the murder that has sent shock waves across the United States and brought back worries of rising Islamophobia in the West.

“My wife was a victim of xenophobia,” Alwadi’s widower Qassem al-Hamidi told Al Arabiya in a phone interview Tuesday.

Hamidi said he and his wife are both from the city of al-Samawa in the governorate of al-Muthana in southern Iraq.

“We got married in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.”

Hamidi and Alwadi had five sons and daughters, aged 17, 16, 13, 12 and eight.

Hamidi, 48, said he could not go on talking and explained that he was in a bad state before passing on the telephone to his wife’s cousin Hussein Alwadi.

“I saw her body in the dinning room a few minutes before the police arrived,” her cousin told Al Arabiya.

He said the murderer snuck into the house on Wednesday morning from the back garden.

“The garden has no fence so he was able to break the glass of the kitchen window right away and apparently he did so without making a noise.”

Hussein added that the attacker then reached for the window handle, opened it, and got inside.

“He did so after watching Shaima’s husband drive away with four of the children he was taking to school. Only Shaima and her eldest daughter Fatima stayed in the house. Fatima was asleep.”

The murderer, Hussein recounted, saw Shaima in the dinning room and attacked her with an iron rod or a spanner.

“He first hit her on her forehead then on her right ear. The third strike was on the back of her head. This was followed by five fast and consecutive strikes on her head and shoulders.”

Shaima, Hussein said, lost consciousness, upon which the attacker left the house.

“Because the attack was fast, the eldest daughter Fatima, who was asleep in the upper floor, did not hear a thing and only found out when she woke up and went downstairs to see her mother’s body drenched in blood.”

Hussein added that they immediately transferred Shaima to the hospital, where she died three days later after doctors failed to save her life and had to take her off life support.

“We got her body and are taking the necessary procedures to take it to Iraq, where she will be buried.”

In addition to the calamity that has befallen the family after Shaima’s death, Hussein noted, they have also been subjected to a smear campaign that has caused them a great deal of emotional hurt.

“The media said that Shiama’s husband was a cultural advisor at the U.S. Army and that he used to train American soldiers heading to the Middle East.”

According to Hussein, Qassem al-Hamidi has been unable to work for the past 18 years.

“He had a complete kidney failure and one of his brothers had to come from Sweden to donate one of his kidneys to him.”

Hussein added that Hamidi has had refugee status since he came to the United States and that Social Welfare pays his rent and his family’s expenses.

“Shaima did not work so they had no source of income.”

Hussein Alwadi was a taxi driver at San Diego Airport and is currently working at the administration of a well-known supermarket in the city of El Cajon, where he lives with his wife and four children.

Hussein said that he and his family were at the same refugee camp where Shaima and her husband got to know each other. The camp, which in 1991 sheltered more than 32,000 Iraqis who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime, was located in the town of Rafha in northern Saudi Arabia.

Both families stayed in the camp for four years before immigrating to the United States.

In 1995, they all left to the United States including Shaima’s seven brothers, some of whom currently live in San Diego and neighboring cities and others in Texas with Shaima’s mother.

Shaima’s father, Islamic preacher Sayyed Nabil Moaad Alwadi, was in Iraq when he got a phone call about his daughter’s death.

“He will stay there to receive her body and burry her,” Hussein concluded.

(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid)

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/27/203513.html

Anonymous · Mar 27, 2012

Had this happened to an American woman in Iraq, the drones would already be in the air.

iraniam · Mar 29, 2012

Rights group slams imprisonment of women for "moral crimes"

Human Rights Watch wants the Afghani government to release 400 women who have been jailed for “moral crimes.”

The rights group has released a report based on interviews with 58 detainees in three women’s prisons and three juvenile detention facilities for girls in various parts of Afghanistan, as well as surveys of judiciary officials and civil and women’s rights activists.

The report indicates that almost half imprisoned women and all the girls in juvenile detention facilities are incarcerated for “moral crimes”, and their main offence in most cases is “flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence.”

Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, said at a press conference in Kabul that Afghanistan is the only country in the world where it is considered a crime for women to run away from home.

He noted that Afghani laws themselves do not criminalize running away from home, but the Afghanistan supreme court is acting as if that’s true.

Roth called on President Hamid Karzai to issue an order saying that running away from home is not a crime and that anyone who is currently in jail for such an offence should be released.

“President Karzai, the United States and others should finally make good on the bold promises they made to Afghan women a decade ago by ending imprisonment for ‘moral crimes’ and actually implementing their stated commitment to support women’s rights,” Roth said.

http://radiozamaneh.com/english/content/rights-group-slams-imprisonment-women-moral-crimes

iraniam · Mar 29, 2012

Diplomatic Moves Increase Pressure on Assad

With his country unraveling in what looks like a sectarian civil war, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been projecting himself as a confident and popular leader on the verge of victory, possibly, analysts said, borrowing lessons drawn from his only remaining regional ally, Iran, on how to resist outside pressure in a crisis.

But a swirl of intense international diplomacy, a meeting of his fractious enemies in neighboring Turkey and speculation that his Iranian friends may be softening their support are presenting new challenges for Mr. Assad, one of the Arab world’s longest-serving autocrats.

On Wednesday, the United Nations secretary general basically demanded that Mr. Assad adhere immediately to a six-point cease-fire proposal that his government had agreed to the day before. The top United Nations human rights official accused his government of torturing children. The Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of anti-Assad exiles plagued by internal differences, agreed to try to expand and reorganize itself to present a united front.

Perhaps the most intriguing news was the visit to Iran by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey after his meeting with President Obama at a conference in South Korea. Mr. Erdogan has good relations with both Mr. Obama and Iran’s leaders. He is also one of Mr. Assad’s most prominent detractors, siding with the United States, and against Iran, on the Syrian president’s legitimacy since Mr. Assad began harshly repressing the year-old uprising, which has taken on increasingly sectarian overtones.

Officials denied that Mr. Erdogan was carrying a message to Iran from Mr. Obama. But the Turkish leader’s visit raised conjecture that Iran, despite expressing support in public for Mr. Assad, might be seeking to distance itself from him. One possibility is that Iran would shift its position on Syria for concessions on the other big issue confronting its leadership: the nuclear dispute with the West.

“You can imagine a deal in which the Iranians say, ‘We’re not going to support Assad,’ in exchange for a deal on nukes,” said Bruce W. Jentleson, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University and a former adviser at the State Department.

Radwan Ziadeh, a member of the Syrian National Council and the executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, said that it has become “even difficult for Iran to support Assad.”
In a sign of incremental movement on the nuclear issue, Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, announced Wednesday that the long-delayed resumption of negotiations on Iran’s disputed uranium enrichment activities would start on April 13.

Mr. Salehi, whose remarks were reported by Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, also said that Tehran supported the peace plan for Syria that was developed by Kofi Annan, the special emissary of the United Nations and Arab League, that was formally accepted by Mr. Assad on Tuesday.

The Iranian statement suggested that Tehran may want to pressure Mr. Assad to adhere to the plan, which lays out a framework for a cease-fire that does not involve his leaving power.
It is possible, analysts said, that both Mr. Assad and Iran’s leadership are following a strategy used to great effect by Iran before: pledging sincerity to diplomacy as a way to stall for time. There was evidence that Mr. Assad was doing that on Wednesday, with unverified claims by the opposition that military attacks continued around the country.

“This is why we have no confidence that Assad will implement the Kofi Annan plan,” Mr. Ziadeh said. Others said Mr. Assad might be convinced that he was winning. That could explain why, on the same day that he agreed to Mr. Annan’s proposal, he made a televised visit to the ravaged city of Homs, an insurgent enclave.

“Assad’s got nothing to lose by following this diplomacy. I’m sure Iran is encouraging him to do it,” said Joshua M. Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “But at the same time, I think Assad believes he’s in the mopping-up stage now. ”

Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from London; Anne Barnard from Al Qaa, Lebanon; Hwaida Saad and Hala Droubi from Beirut, Lebanon; and Artin Afkhami from Boston.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/w...trategy-for-survival.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

iraniam · Mar 29, 2012

Syrian Violence Kills 22 as Arab Leaders Back Peace Plan

Violence across Syria killed at least 22 people - most of them civilians - as Arab leaders in Baghdad backed a peace plan during a summit focused on resolving the year-long Syrian crisis.

Syrian rights activists say forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 16 civilians in assaults on opposition hubs in central Syria and the northern province of Idlib on Thursday. The activists say rebels killed two soldiers in an ambush in Hama province. In other violence, Syrian state news agency SANA says "terrorists" shot and killed two army colonels in the city of Aleppo.Arab leaders and envoys discussed a response to the Syrian crisis at a Baghdad summit - the first to be held by the Arab League in the Iraqi capital since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. A rocket exploded near the fortified Green Zone where the summit was being held, but caused no casualties.

Arab League members called on the Syrian government and opposition to implement the terms of a peace plan drafted by international envoy Kofi Annan. The plan urges both sides to start a cease-fire and a dialogue, but does not call for Assad to step down as part of a political transition.

Arab leaders previously had urged the Syrian president to hand power to a deputy to manage the transition, but now they appear to have backed away from that demand.

Assad said he will "spare no effort" to ensure the success of the Annan peace plan. In remarks published Thursday by SANA, the Syrian president promised to start a national dialogue "in a very short period." But he also said countries providing money and weapons to the Syrian opposition must stop immediately to enable Annan's mission to succeed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it is "essential" for the Syrian president to put his commitments into immediate effect. Speaking to Arab leaders at the start of the Baghdad summit, Ban also accused the Syrian government of failing to fulfill its responsibility to protect its own people.

Only nine leaders of the Arab League's 22 members traveled to Iraq for the summit. Assad was not invited. The absence of other leaders reflected ongoing divisions within the Arab League about how to end Syria's violence.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia were among the nations that sent low-level envoys to the summit. Both have called for tougher action on Syria, including the arming of rebels trying to end Assad's 11-year autocratic rule. Iraq, the summit host, has criticized such proposals, fearing they would further destabilize Syria, a neighbor and trading partner.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani urged summit participants to respond to political upheavals in the Arab world by creating a "suitable atmosphere for dialogue so as to avoid violence, chaos and foreign intervention."

Kuwait's emir was one of the nine visiting leaders. It is the first time a Kuwaiti head of state has traveled to Iraq since the 1990 invasion by the forces of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi authorities sharply increased security for the summit, hoping to show neighboring states that Iraq can maintain stability following the withdrawal of U.S. forces last December.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Baghdad-Summit-Weighs-Syria-as-Violence-Continues-144921495.html

iraniam · Apr 1, 2012

International women’s group begins mapping sexual violence in Syria

The international group, Women’s Media Center, has begun to document acts of sexual violence in Syria in a bid to prosecute future human rights violations and crimes. (File photo

A women rights’ group is using new crowd-sourcing techniques to track rape and other sexual violence across Syria in one of the first efforts to monitor assaults against women during military conflict as it happens.

The effort by the Women’s Media Center aims to shed light on such assaults and provide possible evidence to prosecute future human rights violations and war crimes. The group launched its website on Wednesday and said it was working with multiple Syrian activists whom it did not identify.

So far, the group has posted more than 20 reports, including deaths, from May 6, 2011 to March 17 and is verifying others.

Among incidents reported are undated allegations, labeled unverified, from a Palestinian news outlet that Syrian army forces raped 36 women near the villages of Kurin and Sahl Al-Rawj and from a YouTube video in which a man identified as a Syrian military volunteer says government forces kidnapped and raped 25 girls in Homs.

Crowd-sourcing allows the general public to provide information and report events very quickly. Reports can be made on the website, WomenUnderSiegeSyria.crowdmap.com, via e-mail or on Twitter using the hashtag #RapeinSyria.

Syria faces intense international criticism over its government’s violent crackdown on a popular uprising against the government that began a year ago. More than 9,000 people have been killed, and violence continues despite peace efforts.

Violence against women has been particularly underreported, something the online project aims to change, said Lauren Wolfe, director of the advocacy group’s Women Under Siege project that launched the website.
“The stories are more atrocious than I could have imagined. We have evidence that there’s possible sexual enslavement going on, mutilation - really horrific atrocities,” Wolfe said.

“No one has ever measured sexual violence in conflict during the conflict. It’s always after the fact,” she added.

The Arabic-English website uses technology from Ushahidi, a global nonprofit technology company, and allows anonymous reports.
Ushahidi, which specializes in developing free and open source computer software to collect information, began in 2008 as a website mapping reported violence in Kenya amid a post-election crisis. Its name means “testimony” in Swahili.

So far, reports to the site have come mostly through media outlets. The center said it cannot independently verify all of those stories because the Syrian government has widely blocked access to the country.
Other reports from individuals are currently being assessed, the center’s Wolfe said.

“That can start to give us a picture of the scale and scope of the violence and the human rights violations,” said Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin, who is collaborating with the center on the project and has worked on sexual violence issues in Sudan, Sierra Leone and Bosnia.

Cristina Finch at the international human rights group Amnesty International’s U.S. unit said there are reports of men being raped in Syria as well. Her group tracks torture, harassment and deaths in Syria.

“Any tool that we can use to highlight what’s happening on the ground and document human rights abuse, atrocities and incidences of sexual violence is useful for accountability,” she said.
Imam says ‘Rape victims should be honored’
As Women Under Siege project gathered more reports, director Lauren Wolfe told The Washington Post that they had found something striking.

“Generally women are shunned when they are raped in war.
They sometimes are not allowed to go home, and whole families can be dishonored,” she said. “But what’s really interesting is that we have a report that an imam called for Syrian women who were raped to be honored, for people to embrace them. He said they’re raped and so they are heroes.”

Wolfe said that the group found other examples of support for Syrian rape victims. In one instance, Syrian men offered to marry women who were raped to help restore their honor.

In a video address, Sheikh Adnan al-Aroor, the imam that Wolfe was referring to, encourages victims of rape to accept offers of marriage:
“I am telling you, and I hope you are listening, these girls and women whose chastity was attacked should be honored. I am giving you a religious ruling, a fatwa ... Every girl or woman who got raped, this is an honor and like a medal. People will ask to marry them, and will love them. People from the revolution and others ... I hope she is not sad ... She will have great rewards from God.”

“We often hear about deaths and detentions in Syria. But we don’t hear about rape, because women are stigmatized or killed after they are raped,” the Washington Post quoted Wolfe as saying. “It’s the most twisted reporting situation, to get any accurate information out of Syria ... A major goal is just to put this [issue] into the spotlight.”
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/01/204552.html

Jacky Blue Note · Apr 1, 2012

FEMEN Protest Islam Oppression of Women in Paris

March 31st, 2012

Probably NSFW in some jurisdictions, so I'll just post the link:

http://www.cryptome.org/2012-info/femen-paris/femen-paris.htm

Zak McKracken · Apr 4, 2012

xenubarb said: ↑

How interesting that our local paper, just bought by a rich conservative, did not even mention this story last week.

what story?

Anonymous · Apr 4, 2012

Zak McKracken said: ↑

what story?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/shaima-alawadi-dead_n_1377724.html

Zak McKracken · Apr 4, 2012

Courtesy Slate,
An illustrated guide to the 1949 coup—possibly CIA-assisted—that plunged Syria into decades of political turmoil.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ged_the_country_into_decades_of_turmoil_.html

Zak McKracken · Apr 4, 2012

Part 2:

Zak McKracken · Apr 4, 2012

Anonymous said: ↑

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/shaima-alawadi-dead_n_1377724.html

Sorry, I was just responding to XB, in defense of the Union-Tribune. With their broad and fair-minded acuity, if U-T fails to print something, it must not be news or a story.

iraniam · Apr 4, 2012

Fierce attacks across Syria leave 101 dead; Annan sets to address U.N. on crisis

Fierce clashes erupted after Syria’s regime sent reinforcements into rebel areas on Wednesday despite a truce pledge, while the U.N. said it was rushing a team to Damascus to pave the way for peace monitors.

At least 101 people were killed by security force gunfire on Wednesday across Syria, the Syrian Revolution General Commission reported.

Seven people were killed in the central city of Homs − four rebels who died in clashes with the regular army in the neighborhood of Qussur and three civilians, including a man and his son, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said.

Also in Homs province, three civilians, including a woman were killed by rockets near the border with Lebanon, while a soldier was killed in heavy fighting in the rebel city of Qusayr.

In the province of Idlib in Jabal al-Zawiya area a former political prisoner Ahmed al-Othman and his brother were killed as tank fire struck their car.

An elderly man was also killed in indiscriminate firing in the province as houses were burned and raided in the village of Taftanaz, the Observatory said.

In Deir Ezzor, a rebel hiding in the village of Zibari was killed by gunfire, while in Damascus a "bomb under the car of a pro-regime man" exploded causing no casualties.

Three civilians were killed and 15 wounded in an explosion in a building in the town of Beit Sahem.

And in the province of Daraa, the cradle of uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, government forces stormed the village of Tafas and an arrest campaign was underway in Inkhel.

Syrian activists said there have been explosions and clashes in several parts of the country on Wednesday. The surge in violence on Tuesday killed at least 74 people, mostly in northwestern Idlib province, activists told Al Arabiya.

Opposition figure Mohammed Saleh told The Associated Press there has been a series of loud blasts in the central Homs region and heavy machine gun fire in parts of the old city.

Activist Mohammed Saeed in the Damascus suburb of Duma said regime troops were carrying out raids and arrests on Wednesday. He said tanks and checkpoints remain in place.

Tuesday’s violence saw a string of arson attacks on homes as well, activists and monitors said.

It came a day after peace envoy Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council that President Bashar al-Assad had given assurances he would “immediately” start pulling back his forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.

The United States accused Assad of failing to honor his pledged troop withdrawal, as monitors reported heavy fighting in opposition strongholds in the southern region of Deraa, the central city of Homs, Idlib and near the capital.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has charged that the army is torching and looting rebel houses across the country in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity.

Dozens of armored personnel carriers arrived in Dael, a town in Deraa province where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, as well as in Zabadani, a bastion of the rebellion near the border with Lebanon.

Clashes in the Atbaa area of Deraa left three civilians and two soldiers dead, according to the Observatory.

In Idlib, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the town of Taftanaz, where scores of civilians, rebels and government soldiers were killed amid heavy machinegun fire and shelling, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

With international concern at the situation growing, a draft U.N. Security Council statement was drawn up asking Syria to respect an April 10 deadline to halt its military operations in protest cities, according to a copy of the text received by Al Arabiya.

The draft also urges the Syrian opposition to cease hostilities within 48 hours after the Assad’s regime makes good on its pledges.

It also calls on all parties to respect a two-hour daily humanitarian pause, as called for in Annan’s plan.

Negotiations on the text -- distributed by Britain, France and the United States -- began on Tuesday. France’s U.N. envoy Gerard Araud said he hoped it would be adopted late Wednesday or on Thursday.

In Geneva, a spokesman for Annan said the office of the U.N.-Arab League envoy expected a “U.N. advance team on the deployment of monitors to arrive in Syria in the next 48 hours.”

“A DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping Operations) planning mission should be arriving in Damascus within 48 hours,” spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters in Geneva on Tuesday.

Annan will hold talks with Norway’s Major-General Robert Mood, who will head the advance team, in the Swiss city on Wednesday, Fawzi said.

Mood served as head of mission of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization known as UNTSO, the U.N. peacekeeping operation in the Middle East, for two years until February 2011.

In a briefing Monday to the Security Council, Annan sought a broad mandate for the monitoring mission as he reported “no progress” on reaching a ceasefire, according to diplomats.

Syria’s U.N. envoy, Bashar Jaafari, confirmed the April 10 date had been agreed “by common accord” between Annan and his government.

Seeking to assuage some of the humanitarian concerns, foreign Minister Walid Muallem pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he met the organization’s head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily ceasefire.

International Committee of the Red Cross chief Kellenberger, on his third mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the U.N. says has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his latest trip that he would seek to secure a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.
Annan to address U.N. General Assembly
U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Syria will address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday about Assad’s crackdown on rebels in Syria after a truce pledge.

Following a telephone call with Annan, General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser convened an informal meeting for 10:00 a.m. (1400 GMT) Thursday for Annan to provide an update on the situation in Syria and the “progress of his mission,” a spokeswoman said.

She said Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, would brief via videoconference.

Annan, tapped as envoy in February, has previously briefed the U.N. Security Council twice on his mission in Syria. He said Monday that Assad had agreed to “immediately” start pulling troops out of protest cities and complete a troop and heavy weapons withdrawal by April 10.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/04/205276.html

iraniam · Apr 5, 2012

At least 38 killed across Syria as fierce clashes rage on in rebel towns

Fierce clashes between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters erupted on Thursday in Duma, near the capital Damascus, while violence also raged in other parts of the strife-torn country, monitors said.

At least 38 people, half of them civilians, were killed in violence across the country on Thursday, monitors said, with fierce fighting between regime troops and insurgents in the rebel provinces of Idlib and Homs.

In central Homs province, army shelling of the town of Rastan killed four civilians, including two children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Homs city itself, eight regime forces were killed and dozens wounded in fighting with rebel forces on the outskirts of the Deir Baalaba neighbourhood, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

Four civilians were also killed in Homs city, including three stabbed by Shabiha pro-regime militia, the Observatory added.

Separately, regime troops backed by tanks stormed Douma, near Damascus, at dawn amid heavy gunfire and shelling.

Clashes between soldiers and rebel forces were reported in various parts of Douma, some 13 kilometers (seven miles) northeast of the capital, with a civilian killed by sniper fire, the Observatory said.

Plumes of smoke could be seen near the city's main mosque as troop reinforcements were sent in.

Two young men were killed in Kfar Sousa, a neighborhood of Damascus early on Thursday when security forces opened fire on their car.

In the embattled northwestern province of Idlib, meanwhile, at least eight civilians were killed, along with six regime forces, the Observatory said.

Clashes were also reported in several towns in nearby Aleppo province, including Andan and Hritan, where messages on loudspeakers urged regime troops to defect and join the opposition.

Five soldiers were killed in two separate attacks there and in southern Daraa, cradle of the revolt that broke out in March last year against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the Observatory said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime troops backed by tanks stormed Duma at dawn amid heavy gunfire and shelling.

Mohammed Abu Nasr, an activist in Hraytan, said the town of about 50,000 has been subjected to intense shelling by tanks and helicopters since 5 a.m. local time, the Associated Press reported. He added that a ground offensive began three hours later and hundreds of troops are pushing their way into the town.

“There are wounded people in the streets that we cannot reach because of the shelling,” Abu Nasr told AP by telephone. “The situation is catastrophic in the city. Large numbers of people are fleeing.”

Violence across the country has left hundreds of people dead so far this week despite a pledge by President Bashar al-Assad to implement a peace plan brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
Intensification of violence
Two young men were killed in Kfar Sousa, a neighborhood of Damascus early Thursday when security forces opened fire on their car, the Observatory said.

Activists added that troops were also in pursuit of several other young men in the neighborhood.

Five soldiers were meanwhile killed in two separate attacks in the northern province of Aleppo and in southern Deraa, cradle of the revolt that broke out last year in March against Assad’s regime.

Clashes were reported in several towns of Aleppo province, including Andan and Hritan where messages on loudspeakers urged regime troops to defect and join the opposition, the Observatory said.

Washington on Wednesday criticized the “intensification” of violence against opponents of the regime given Assad’s pledge to implement by April 10 Annan’s six-point peace plan.

Activists reached by phone Wednesday in north, south and central Syria said they had seen no sign that the military was pulling out. Some reported the opposite.

The unrest in Syria has so far left more than 9,000 people dead since mid-March last year, according to U.N. figures.

The revolt against the regime began as a popular uprising but has transformed into an insurgency many fear will lead to a full-blown civil war.
A policy of genocide against the Syrian people
The Syrian National Council, the main opposition bloc, accused the regime of carrying out “a policy of genocide against the Syrian people” and called for immediate pressure from the international community for a pullback of tanks.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday predicted that under-equipped rebel forces would never be able to defeat Syria’s powerful military.

“It is clear as day that even if the Syrian opposition is armed to the teeth, it will not be able to defeat the government’s army,” the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying while on a visit to the ex-Soviet nation of Azerbaijan.

“Instead, there will be carnage that lasts many, many years -- mutual destruction.”

Lavrov said two groups of Syrian opposition representatives would visit Moscow in the coming days and that Russia would try to convince them that it wanted to help resolve the year-long crisis.

Seeking to assuage humanitarian concerns, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem pledged Damascus would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission, at a meeting on Tuesday with visiting ICRC chief Jakob Kellenberger.

Kellenberger, who is pushing for a daily ceasefire, travelled on Wednesday to Deraa to assess the humanitarian needs there, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Two lorries filled with food aid and hygiene kits, as well as 500 blankets, were unloaded at Red Cross depots in Deraa ready for distribution, ICRC spokesman in Damascus Saleh Dabbakeh told AFP.

The state news agency SANA, meanwhile, said “armed terrorist groups” had burnt down a Syrian Red Crescent depot in the Karabis district of Homs, in an incident condemned by the local relief organization.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/05/205560.html

iraniam · Apr 6, 2012

Thousands demonstrate in Syria as violence rages before ceasefire deadline

A woman takes part in a demonstration by Syrian refugees and local residents against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after Friday prayers outside the Syrian embassy in Amman. (Reuters
Tens of thousands of Syrians demanding an end to the regime took to the streets on Friday under fire from government forces, who pressed their campaign to pound rebel cities into submission, activists said.

As many as 48 people were killed by the Syrian forces on Friday mostly in Homs and Aleppo suburbs, Al Arabiya reported citing Syrian activists at the Local Coordination Committees (LCC).

The violence raged a day after international envoy Kofi Annan spoke of “alarming” casualties despite the regime accepting an Apr. 10 deadline to withdraw forces from protest hubs.

On its Facebook page, the Syrian Revolution 2011 activist group had urged Syrians to demonstrate in favor of arming anti-regime rebels, according to AFP.

The LCC said security forces shot at demonstrators in Duma north of Damascus, in the central city of Hama and in Idlib in the northwest.

Demonstrations were also reported in southern Deraa province, cradle of the revolt, the LCC said.

Others were staged at Qamishli in the northern Kurdish region and at Deir al-Zor in the east, as well as in Idlib province, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based Observatory also reported fierce battles in the villages of al-Tiba, Al-Qabu and Shniyeh in central Homs province.

It said the clashes erupted after loyalist militias opened fire on seven women, killing two and wounding four.

The Observatory said regime forces were pounding districts of Homs city and Rastan to the north, with searches under way in Damascus suburbs after a night of clashes with deserters in which three soldiers were killed.

“At least 5 tanks and 10 buses loaded with security men and Shabiha (pro-Assad militia) entered Duma,” one local activist told Reuters. “There has been shelling on Duma since the morning.”

In Rastan, an activist said Free Syrian Army rebels had confronted a morning tank thrust. “They blocked the advance and the Assad army left. Then artillery started,” he said.

Accounts of the violence are difficult to verify because Syria’s government restricts access to independent journalists.
Stepping up pressure
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council, including Russia and China, joined Annan in stepping up pressure on President Bashar al-Assad to implement a six-point peace plan.

It called on the “Syrian government to implement urgently and visibly its commitments” made to Annan to take the steps toward a cessation of hostilities, a statement said.

It called for Syria to start a two-hour daily pause in hostilities and to allow immediate humanitarian access.

The council also said that, depending on Annan’s progress reports, it will “consider further steps as appropriate.”

Damascus has agreed to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from cities by next Tuesday. Annan said that if this happens he will call for a complete halt to hostilities by “0600 hours Damascus time on Thursday Apr. 12.”

But Syria has said the number of what it calls terrorist acts has risen since the deal with reached with Annan.

“The terrorist acts committed by the armed terrorist groups in Syria have increased during the last few days, particularly after reaching an understanding on Kofi Annan’s plan,” said a letter sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Western governments and the opposition say they have strong doubts Assad will comply, and Annan said he had no confirmation of a Syrian claim that troops had begun a partial withdrawal from Idlib, Zabadani and Deraa.

“Clearly the violence is still continuing. Alarming levels of casualties and other abuses continue to be reported daily,” he told the U.N. General Assembly.

That was echoed by Ban, who said “the violence and assaults in civilian areas have not stopped. The situation on the ground continues to deteriorate.”

Walid al-Bunni, who is close to the opposition Syrian National Council, said he doubted the government would implement the plan, claiming that would be suicidal.

“To apply the plan would mean to authorize peaceful demonstrations, and the number of them that would take place, in which millions of Syrians would participate, would mean the end of the regime,” Bunni told AFP in Cairo.

The Security Council has been badly divided on Syria, and the new statement was softened at the demand of Russia, a long-time ally of Syria that has nonetheless hardened its stance toward Damascus, diplomats said.

The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the regime’s crackdown on the year-old uprising. Activists say more than 10,000 people have died.

Syria’s U.N. envoy Bashar Jaafari said on Thursday Damascus was committed to the Annan plan but lashed out at several nations for supporting opposition groups.

“We need to get commitments from the Qataris, from the Saudis, from the Turks, from the French, from the USA, that Annan should be given a chance in order to succeed,” Jaafari said.

He demanded a crystal clear commitment from Annan that once the government ends violence “the other parties will do the same and will not fill the vacuum” caused by the withdrawal of Syrian forces.

Annan’s spokesman said on Thursday a U.N. advance team headed by a Norwegian general had arrived in Syria to discuss the eventual deployment of a U.N. supervising mission.

And Ankara urged the United Nations and international community to reinforce efforts to aid Syrian refugees after a record 2,800 people poured across the border in less than two days, taking the number in Turkey to 23,835.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/06/205858.html

Anonymous · Apr 6, 2012

Kellenberger, who is pushing for a daily ceasefire, travelled on Wednesday to Deraa to assess the humanitarian needs there, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Two lorries filled with food aid and hygiene kits, as well as 500 blankets, were unloaded at Red Cross depots in Deraa ready for distribution, ICRC spokesman in Damascus Saleh Dabbakeh told AFP.

Nice to get little bits of Good News amongst all this carnage and mayhem. I hope the trucks get through to their destination, unscathed.

iraniam · Apr 7, 2012

Syrian security officials 'tortured pregnant mother with electric shocks in front of infant sons'

Ayman Karnebo spent a week in prison in Idlib province when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began spreading across the country last May.
His account sheds more light on the depravity of a prison system in which an entire family can be locked up and subjected to brutal torment.

Mr Karnebo spent a day in the same cell as the captive family, who were of Somali origin. As the revolt took hold, all outsiders were viewed with deep suspicion, apparently explaining their arrest.
The father, whose name was Ahmed and who looked to be in his twenties, was in the cell alongside his pregnant wife, who was about the same age. The couple's two boys - aged about three and five - were also with them. So was Ahmed's mother, a woman in her fifties.

"The security men wanted them to confess to destroying buildings. They wanted them to admit they had come from outside the country to cause trouble in Syria," said Mr Karnebo. "But they were just people who had come to Syria to look for a better life."

All three adults, including the grandmother and the pregnant mother, were tortured with electric shocks in front of the terrified children. Shocks were systematically applied to the most vulnerable parts of the body, concentrating on elbows, hands and toes.

"I know the Somali man's name because they were shouting at him 'Ahmed confess, Ahmed you must confess'," remembered Mr Karnebo.
"When they went to torture the wife, the husband was shouting 'she is pregnant, she has a baby inside her'. But they had no problem with doing this to her. They had no mercy."

After suffering this torment for a day, the family was bundled out of the cell, located in the prison in the town of Jisr al-Shugur, and transferred to another jail. Mr Karnebo believes they went to Idlib central prison, but their fate is unknown.

He bears the scars inflicted by the same treatment: gashes in his elbows and hands show where electric shocks were applied. "They accused me of destroying the office of [Mr Assad's] Ba'ath party," said Mr Karnebo, 37. "They found I had a Turkish SIM card for my mobile, so they accused me of communicating with the opposition in Turkey. They said I was raising money for guns for the rebels."

When he refused to confess, he was pushed into the same cell as the Somalis, where his torture took place. Mr Karnebo still refused to sign an admission of guilt, so an official known as Abdul Majid simply forged a signature on a written confession.

But one of Mr Karnebo's relatives is a local Ba'ath party official. This man paid a bribe to secure his release. Thanks to the influence of this relative, Mr Karnebo considers his own treatment to have been relatively lenient. "He paid bribes to make sure I wasn't tortured so badly," said Mr Karnebo, who later fled to neighbouring Turkey and now lives in a refugee camp in the border town of Yayladagi.

Many of the fugitives, who inhabit blue and white tents pitched in the grounds of a hospital, have suffered at the hands of Mr Assad's security forces. But one man, known as Mukhtar, was part of the machine that inflicted the torment.

He worked as a guard in the "investigations" wing of Idlib central prison, where security officials would routinely torture inmates. Mukhtar, 32, did not take part himself, but he witnessed the various methods used to extract information and confessions.

Some prisoners were forced into the "cross" position: spread-eagled against a wall and compelled to stand on tiptoe, with wrists and ankles bound. They were then subjected to electric shocks, with special attention being paid to the toes.

Others were tied to a table, exposing the soles of the feet to being whipped with an electric flex. Some male prisoners were subjected to sexual assaults, with one named official being particularly notorious for violating his charges.

After witnessing this treatment for seven months, Mukhtar fled to Turkey last November. "For me, all the prisoners were my people. I never wanted to see them harmed," he said.

The treatment meted out to political prisoners has often been effective in breaking their will to resist. Yusuf Dandash spent 23 days in jail last year, blindfolded, handcuffed and enduring constant beatings. The soles of his feet were excoriated with an electric flex, before shocks were applied to his toes.

"After they did this to me, I gave them everything," he said. "I accepted what they wanted."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/919...-electric-shocks-in-front-of-infant-sons.html

lulzgasm · Apr 7, 2012

Can anyone confirm whether or not Blackwater is now operating in Syria?

Anonymous · Apr 7, 2012

lulzgasm said: ↑

Can anyone confirm whether or not Blackwater is now operating in Syria?

Blackwater now operates under a different name, and I forget what it is. For awhile, I think it was Xe. Wiki seems to suggest the name is now Academi.

Eric Prince sold the company in 2010. What became of Blackwater post-sale is unknown to me. Wiki also states that Eric Prince is in UAE, training Somali's to defeat Pirates. I don't know how current this information is.

iraniam · Apr 8, 2012

'Supporting Al-Assad': Cartoon by Iranian artist Mana Neyestani

http://en.irangreenvoice.com/articl...rangreenvoice/En (Iran Green Voice - English)

Mutante · Apr 8, 2012

lol Assad. What a dumb cunt.

iraniam · Apr 9, 2012

UN: Syria Must Stop Assault by Tuesday

The United Nations has reiterated its call for the Syrian government to comply with a Tuesday deadline for ceasing military action against civilian areas. But an escalation of violence fed withering hopes that the government would honor its commitments.

With just hours to go before the Syrian army is to withdraw from towns and cities and cease using heavy weapons as the first step of a six-point peace plan brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, that plan looked in jeopardy as government tanks and helicopters reportedly attacked several cities, including the flashpoint towns of Homs, Hama, and Dara'a.

Violence also spilled over Syria’s frontiers Monday, when a Lebanese cameraman was shot and killed on the Lebanese side of the border by gunfire coming from inside Syria. Meanwhile, officials in Turkey said Syrian forces fired across their border at a refugee camp for Syrians, injuring several people.

But despite the escalation, United Nations spokesman Martin Nesirky remained adamant that the violence must cease by Tuesday.

"That deadline has not shifted, nor has responsibility for the Syrian authorities to cease all military actions against the Syrian people, in line with the promises that they have made," he said. "They need to implement the promises and the commitments that they have entered into fully and unconditionally. That is something that has not changed and will not change - the deadline is as set out already."

On Sunday, Damascus said it wanted written guarantees that the armed opposition would stop fighting before it pulls back its military under the terms of the Annan plan. It also demanded written assurances from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the three countries Syria accuses of funding and arming the rebels.

Meanwhile, U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said based on Monday’s violence, Washington is "not hopeful" Tuesday’s cessation of hostilities would go forward. But she did not give up hope on Kofi Annan’s efforts.

"[Annan] is a highly respected diplomat. He put forward something that was accepted by the entire international community - which was not the state that we were in before he joined this effort - and that was accepted by Assad," she said. "The fact that it has not worked yet does not change the fact that having the international community increasingly united and increasingly willing to pressure Assad will not [sic] eventually bring him down. He will go down.”

Annan is traveling this week to Turkey and Iran to continue his mediation efforts via countries that have influence with both the Syrian government and the opposition. He said Sunday that the escalation of violence is “unacceptable” and urged the government to implement its commitments as the April 10 deadline draws near.

Russia and China, which have until recently protected Syria from action in the U.N. Security Council, are also trying to keep the mediation efforts alive. Syria’s foreign minister is due in Moscow for talks Tuesday with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov. China’s foreign ministry spokesman has urged the government and rebels to honor their truce commitments.

The United Nations estimates that more than 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the army began cracking down on anti-government protesters 13 months ago.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/UN-Syria-Must-Stop-Assault-by-Tuesday-146712585.html

iraniam · Apr 13, 2012

Protests and reported clashes to test U.N. ceasefire in Syria; 7 protestors shot dead

At least seven protesters were shot dead by Syrian security forces on Friday on the second day of a nationwide ceasefire meant to restore peaceful political dialogue after 13 months of extreme violence, opposition activists said.

The shootings occurred as demonstrators rallied against President Bashar al-Assad, who has accepted the terms of the United Nations-brokered ceasefire which took effect on Thursday.

Syrians took to the streets across the country in small demonstrations after Friday’s Muslim prayers, trusting that the two-day-old ceasefire would protect them from the army bullets that have frightened off peaceful protesters for months.

One person was killed as marchers tried to converge on a central square in the city of Hama. Security forces shot one person dead as worshippers left a mosque in the town of Nawa in the southern Deraa province, where the uprising began.

A third died from his wounds after he was shot by security forces in the town of Salqeen in the northwestern province of Idlib, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the anti-Assad Local Coordination Committees said.
Friday of protests
Protesters held rallies in the Qadam and Assali districts of Damascus, while other demonstrations took place in towns and villages in the northern province of Aleppo, according to videos posted by activists on the Internet.

The human rghts' group added that demonstrators hurled stones at security forces in the Tariq al-Sadd district of Daraa, south of Damascus, cradle of the protest movement that erupted in March last year.

After the ceasefire came into force at dawn Thursday, peace envoy Kofi Annan declared he was “encouraged by reports that the situation in Syria is relatively calm and that the cessation of hostilities appears to be holding.”

But as Assad’s government and the rebels traded accusations of trying to wreck the ceasefire, Annan insisted “all parties have obligations to implement fully the six-point plan.”

The SNC, the most widely recognized opposition group in exile, and Internet-based activists called for peaceful demonstrations across Syria to test the government’s readiness to accept public shows of dissent.

“We call on the people to demonstrate and express themselves... The right to demonstrate is a principal point of the plan,” Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, told AFP.

But Syria’s interior ministry insists people wanting to demonstrate must have permits.

“The right to demonstrate peacefully is guaranteed by law. We call on citizens to apply the law by requesting a permit before demonstrating,” said a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad fought rebels on Friday near the border with Turkey, according to activists in the first clash since a U.N.-brokered ceasefire came into effect a day earlier.

The clash appears to be the first serious violation of an internationally brokered ceasefire that went into effect a day earlier.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the clashes are taking place on the outskirts of the northwestern village of Khirbet el-Joz that borders Turkey.

The group, which has a network of activist throughout Syria, said army deployed tanks in the area before the clash.

“Fighting with heavy machineguns took place in Khirbet al-Joz, located (in Idlib province) on the Turkish border, between regime soldiers and (army) deserters,” Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Beirut.

Abdel Rahman, speaking on the phone, said the fighting was the first between the two sides since the ceasefire.

Opposition activist group Local Coordination Committees reported that dozens of tanks were deployed on the outskirts of Khirbet al-Joz and near the border with Turkey, while heavy gunfire was heard as regime forces attacked a unit of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

The rebel Free Syrian Army, for its part, insisted it was sticking to the ceasefire.

“The regime is being elusive. We are 100 percent committed to the ceasefire, but the regime is not abiding by it,” said FSA spokesman Colonel Kassem Saadeddine.

The Free Syrian Army in Idlib said they have orders not to respond to any military provocations by the regime.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier on Friday that he did not believe in the sincerity of Assad, nor in the U.N.-backed ceasefire aimed at halting 13 months of bloodshed.

“I do not believe in Bashar al-Assad’s sincerity, nor unfortunately in the ceasefire. I think we must deploy observers so that at the very least we know what is happening,” he said in an interview with French television I-Tele.

“I am convinced that the international community must assume its responsibilities and create humanitarian corridors so those unfortunates who are being massacred by a dictator can escape,” said Sarkozy, who is campaigning for re-election in an April-May presidential vote.

On Friday, the UN Security Council could vote on a resolution authorizing the deployment of observers to monitor both sides to the conflict in Syria, which monitors say has cost more than 10,000 lives since March 2011.

At least 37 people were reportedly killed by army gunfire across Syria on Thursday, according to Local Coordinating Committees, despite the military ceasefire agreement that started on the same day.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/13/207408.html

iraniam · Apr 15, 2012

First truce monitors to arrive in Syria soon as army continues to shell Homs

Syrian government forces shelled the city of Homs on Sunday, resident opposition activists and a rights activist said, as a six-person advance party of U.N. observers is due to arrive in Syria to monitor a ceasefire meant to start four days ago.

“The bombardment of Khaldiyeh intensified this morning with an average of three shells a minute,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

The rebel district of Bayada was also shelled, Abdel Rahman said, adding that it was the fiercest shelling of Homs since a U.N.-backed ceasefire went into force at dawn on Thursday.

The security forces now control some 70 percent of the flashpoint city, which has seen some of the biggest losses of life of the 13-month uprising in Syria.

Rebel fighters remain entrenched in several mainly Sunni Muslim neighborhoods of the Old City, Abdel Rahman said.

An initial team of monitors is due to arrive in Syria on Sunday evening and will be deployed on Monday, the spokesman for international mediator Kofi Annan said.

They will be joined by at least two dozen more in coming days in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on Saturday authorizing their deployment, Ahmad Fawzi said.

“The first batch of six U.N. observers arrives tonight, they will be on the ground in blue helmets tomorrow (Monday),” Fawzi told Reuters in Geneva. “They will be quickly augmented by up to 25-30 from the region and elsewhere.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that the number of unarmed observers was insufficient and had to be “beefed up.”

“This number of people cannot possibly effectively monitor what is happening in the whole country,” he said in an interview with Sky News, adding that 30 monitors could, however, quickly visit areas where they are reports of ceasefire breaches.

“The plan will be for a much larger (team), more in the hundreds, of monitors to follow them provided the (ceasefire) plan is being implemented by all concerned,” he said.

Three civilians died in shelling of Homs on Saturday, among 14 people killed nationwide ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote approving the dispatch of the observer mission to monitor the shaky truce.

With a cease-fire barely holding and the deployment of unarmed foreign observers expected to ease but not end months of violence, world powers are still struggling to find a longer-term strategy for Syria.

In theory, the world’s most powerful countries, the government of President Bashar al-Assad and much of the Syrian opposition have all signed up to a multipoint plan formulated by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan. But the reality remains much more complex.

While Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly said they want to avoid a Libya-style externally backed regime change, the United States, Britain and France still say they want Assad gone.

“The main focus at the moment is the... rapid deployment of monitors,,” said one Western official on condition of anonymity. “That’s a priority, but it’s not the only one... at the end of the day, do not see a future for Syria with Assad in charge. We are in this for the long haul.”

But officials concede they have few immediate tools with which to make that happen. Even a U.S. plan to provide “non-lethal” support to opposition fighters could end up being shelved, some suspect, largely because the rebels remain so disunited and ineffective.

U.S. pressure, insiders say, has already deterred Saudi Arabia and Qatar from making good on long-running talk they might provide weapons.

For now, Annan, Western powers and their Arab allies say Assad remains in breach of much of the peace plan. Privately, many Western diplomats worry his strategy may be to give just enough to drive a wedge between them and a much more reluctant Russia and China.

“The game for the weekend is watching whether the ceasefire holds and the monitors are approved,” said another Western official. “After that it gets more complicated.”

The most realistic immediate hope, officials say, would be that Assad's forces cease use of heavy weaponry.

But if an earlier Arab league monitoring attempt in Syria -- or other previous similar missions in Sri Lanka and Kosovo -- are anything to go by, unarmed observers might struggle to stop killings, abductions and use of snipers.

Certainly, few believe Syria will genuinely follow through to withdraw troops from urban areas or allow peaceful protest. For world powers, the true challenge will come if the monitors report a fall in violence but accuse Syria of ignoring other areas of Annan’s plan.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/15/207826.html

iraniam · Apr 15, 2012

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to go on hunger strike

Hana Shalabi arrives in Gaza City as part of a compromise deal that persuaded her to end her 43-day hunger strike in protest at Israel's policy of administrative detention. Photograph: Corbis

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are expected to embark on hunger strikes this week to draw attention to imprisonment without charge and solitary confinement. They will build on a protest that has resulted in deals to release two inmates who refused food for prolonged periods.

At least 11 prisoners are already on hunger strike, three of whom have been transferred to hospital. One began refusing fluids last week, increasing concern about the rate of deterioration of his health.

A wave of hunger strikes is planned to begin on or around Prisoners' Day on Tuesday, held under the slogan: "We will live in dignity." About 1,600 prisoners have agreed to take part in the protest, according to Palestinian prisons minister Issa Qaraqi. "The situation inside Israeli prisons has become very dangerous and serious," he was quoted as saying.

There are around 4,600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, according to the prisoners' rights group Addameer. More than 300 are held under "administrative detention", meaning they and their lawyers are not informed of accusations or evidence against them, no trial is held, and their term of imprisonment is determined by an Israeli military judge.

Of the 11 prisoners currently on hunger strike, two have refused food for 46 days. Bilal Diab, 27, who has been held under administrative detention since last August, has also refused fluids either orally or intravenously since 8 April, and has lost consciousness a number of times, according to Physicians for Human Rights.

PHR has urged the Israeli authorities to grant Diab's request to be transferred to a civilian hospital and has cited World Medical Association advice that "the body is unable to survive without liquids for more than a few days, and in most cases a hunger striker will die during the first week".

Thae'r Halahi, 34, has been held in administrative detention for 22 months, plus for five separate previous periods of between three months and one year. His condition was described as stable but commensurate with a prolonged period without food.

Khadar Adnan, the first prisoner to begin a hunger strike in the current wave, refused food for 66 days before agreeing to a deal that should see him released this week after four months in administrative detention.
Adnan, 33, was followed by a woman prisoner, Hana Shalabi, who was released and deported to Gaza after 43 days on hunger strike. Her family home is in the village of Burqin, near Jenin, in the north West Bank.

She considered herself "not deported but freed to Gaza", where she had never been before, she told the Guardian. "It's a victory for me." But she acknowledged that she had come under pressure from the Israeli authorities to accept the deal and end her protest, amid fears that her life was in danger.

Hunger strikes were, she said, "a good and effective tool, and the only way prisoners can achieve something". She is still suffering from weakness and swollen legs since ending her protest, and is under medical supervision. "Physically it was hard, but morally I was high," she said.

Shalabi, 30, had previously been held for 25 months under administrative detention, but was freed in October under the prisoner exchange deal struck by Israel to secure the release of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit. She was re-arrested on 16 February.

She denied being an activist with Islamic Jihad. However, the faction had rented an apartment in Gaza City for her, in which a large Islamic Jihad poster was displayed on the wall. Her brother, Samir, who was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers in 2005, had been convicted of Islamic Jihad activities.

Under the terms of the deal that ended her hunger strike, she must stay in Gaza for three years, after which she will be allowed to return to the West Bank unless she is found to have been involved with a banned organisation. "The Israelis also threatened me that if I took part in any political or military activity, then I could be targeted [for assassination]," she said.

Addameer described Shalabi's deportation as a "forced displacement". "We consider this a violation of the fourth Geneva convention," said Sahar Francis, director of Addameer. "We're happy she was released but not to be forced to live in Gaza. They have sent her from one prison to another big prison."

Shalabi agreed to the deal when physically and mentally weak and without access to independent lawyers, said both Addameer and Amnesty International. "The deal may amount to a forcible deportation given her medical condition and the denial of access to independent doctors and lawyers," said Ann Harrison of Amnesty.

Israeli government spokesman Ofir Gendelman said Shalabi was deported to Gaza "because she cannot pose from there a clear and present danger to the safety of the Israeli public … If Shalabi was to return to the West Bank, there is no doubt that she would return to her terrorist activities with the Islamic Jihad."
Since being released in October, she had planned attacks against Israeli citizens, he added.

Around one third of the 477 Palestinian prisoners released last October in the first stage of the Gilad Shalit deal were deported to Gaza, 17 for three years and 144 permanently. The Hamas government is now building a new neighbourhood south of Gaza City for them, and is also paying salaries to those not provided for by other factions.

Hamas has said that the only way to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is by abducting Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips. "If the enemy has not learned, we are prepared to give them practical lessons," Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in exile, told a conference in Qatar this month. "The only way to free prisoners is by exchanging them for [Israeli] prisoners and leaders."

Hamas leaders inside Gaza echoed the call for militants to step up efforts to seize Israeli soldiers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/15/palestinian-prisoners-israel-hunger-strike

iraniam · Apr 17, 2012

Israeli soldiers brutally attack Palestinians and ISM activists on bike ride

An Israeli officer was videotaped hitting a Dutch student protesting against occupation in the West Bank. Dan Ephron on the aggressive tactics Israel is taking to stop foreign activists.
The Israeli military quickly suspended the officer, a lieutenant-colonel, and stressed that the beating ran against Army policies. A spokesman said investigators would determine whether the officer should be prosecuted.
But even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the incident, other Israelis pointed a finger at the activists, saying their actions reflected an ugly bias against Israel within left-wing circles in Europe.
Mira Ten-Hagen read about the plight of Palestinians online, then Googled the International Solidarity Movement, a group that helps volunteers mostly from Europe and the United States get to the West Bank to take part in nonviolent protests against Israel military rule. The Dutch college student signed up for a two-month tour.
This past weekend, seven weeks after arriving, Ten-Hagen was thrust into the conflict’s searing spotlight when an Israeli officer was caught on video smashing her in the face with his rifle during what appears to have been a peaceful demonstration in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. “The soldiers formed a line to stop us and then one of them hit me and I fell to the ground,” she told The Daily Beast.
The incident underscored the growing involvement of foreigners—mostly Europeans—in campaigns against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and the increasingly aggressive measures Israel has taken to stop them.
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is how you prove your left credentials in Europe,” says political scientist Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, a private college in Herzliya.

“It’s one thing if people say, ‘On balance, I understand Israel’s concerns but we support the right of Palestinians to have a state.’ But it’s not like that. It’s like Israel is completely bad and they will not listen to anything else.”
Palestinians, of course, say the opposite is true. They maintain that Israel cynically portrays all criticism as anti-Semitic or as an attempt to delegitimize its very existence instead of recognizing it for what it is: a genuine critique of Israel’s often harsh military rule over the Palestinians since 1967.

“Israel won’t tolerate any criticism whatsoever. It shuts down all freedom of expression,” said Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian activist.

He cites as an example his own experience organizing a campaign to bring about 1,500 mostly Europeans to the West Bank for a series of political activities last week. Though no protests or provocations were planned, he says, Israel blocked most of the activists from entering the country.

At the airport, Israeli officials gave the activists a sarcastic letter asking why they’re not focusing on other Middle East countries including Syria, where the “regime’s daily savagery against its own people … has claimed thousands of lives.”

Youtube.com
“But instead you chose to protest against Israel, the Middle East’s sole democracy, where women are equal, the press criticizes the government, human rights organizations can operate freely, religious freedom is protected for all and minorities do not live in fear,” reads the letter.

The involvement of Western activists in Palestinian protests is not new and neither are the accusations against them. The International Solidarity Movement, which is led mostly by Palestinians, has been active in the West Bank since 2001, and other groups have been collaborating with foreigners since well before then.

But the latest confrontation follows closely on the heels of another controversy that had already raised sensitivities: a poem published by the German novelist Günter Grass that suggested Israel might be planning to annihilate Iranians as part of its effort to stop Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Though it was criticized by figures across Europe’s political spectrum, the poem heightened the feeling that Israelis often articulate about their critics—that their censures are marked by a double standard and often laced with anti-Semitism.

Israel responded by barring Grass from ever visiting the Jewish state.
Ten-Hagen, the Dutch activist, said the incident over the weekend took place when about 200 Palestinian and foreign activists began a bike tour on Route 90, a road in the West Bank where she said Palestinians are often harassed.

They were stopped almost immediately by about 10 Israeli soldiers, who tossed their bicycles in a ditch before turning violent. She said the soldiers struck at least two other protesters, including an activist from Denmark.
After the video surfaced, the Danish ambassador to Israel asked officials to explain the incident.

The Army said it was checking whether the soldiers were attacked in any way. But Palestinians said a video of the entire incident showed that the violence by soldiers was unprovoked.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...video-israel-and-foreign-activists-clash.html

iraniam · Apr 18, 2012

Afghan Authorities Eye Taliban In Suspected Girls School Poisoning

Officials in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Takhar believe the Taliban was responsible for the suspected poisoning this week of more than 140 schoolgirls and their female teachers.

The incident on April 17 has rekindled concerns about the safety of girls trying to receive an education in Afghanistan, with foreign forces preparing to leave the country by the end of 2014.

Human-rights advocates say the international community must ensure that access to education for girls in Afghanistan is not sacrificed as security is handed over to Afghan forces or as a result of any political settlement between Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government and insurgents.

Hafizullah Safi, the head of Takhar province's public health department, says investigators "strongly suspect" a water-supply tank at the Rostaq district's school for girls was poisoned by Taliban militants.

Safi says both the water supply itself and blood from hospitalized girls are being tested as part of an ongoing investigation by Afghan authorities.

"Their health condition is good now. They now only are showing signs of dizziness, fatigue, and exhaustion," Safi says. "The results of our investigation are not yet known. It has not been confirmed whether they were really poisoned or they were affected by hysterics after seeing, in their words, a man close to the water tank -- and fainted as a result.

"Perhaps that man did nothing and they fell ill due to a physiological effect," Safi continues. "We've taken blood samples of five girls, as well as samples of the water, and sent them along to Kabul to make clear whether it was poisoning or just a psychological condition."

Tawhidi says the parents of the sick schoolgirls are insisting on sending their daughters back to continue their education.

Listed In Stable Condition

Most of the hospitalized girls and teachers reportedly had been drinking from the school's water tank before becoming ill with symptoms that included severe nausea, headaches, and dizziness. But some reportedly fell ill only after seeing signs of sickness among the others.

The parents of the sick schoolgirls are insisting on sending their daughters back to continue their education.
About 40 girls were treated and released on April 17 while about 100 others -- including adult female teachers -- were kept at the hospital for observation.

By midday on April 18, Safi said 15 girls remained hospitalized with ongoing symptoms of poisoning. They were listed in stable condition.

The Taliban has not claimed responsibility for the incident. But Faizullah Tawhidi, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Takhar, said confirmation of poisoning would support investigators' suspicions of Taliban involvement because of the militia's opposition to schooling for girls.

"Of course, if it's proven that the water was poisoned or materials were mixed with it in order to damage the health of the girls, it is clear that it has been done by the enemies of Afghanistan, by those who do not want the children of the country to continue with their studies," Tawhidi says.

Taliban Infiltration

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for few incidents of violence in Takhar Province compared to other parts of Afghanistan. Tawhidi says, however, that Taliban militants appear to have infiltrated the province in recent years.

"Some secret networks of the Taliban are active [in the province]," he says, "and it is clear that they are trying to damage the society by resorting to different methods."

When in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban regime banned education for girls. Taliban fighters have continued to target girls schools in the areas they control since then, resorting to rocket and mortar attacks, arson, poison, and even throwing acid in the faces of young girls. Taliban militants also have beheaded teachers who taught girls.

Afghan Education Ministry officials have confirmed there were at least 17 poison-gas attacks on girls schools in Afghanistan in 2010 -- including six attacks in Kabul -- that were thought to have been carried out by the Taliban or their sympathizers.

Skeptics downplayed many of those incidents, saying the wave of reported gas attacks was likely the result of mass hysteria. But doctors who treated victims said the use of poison was apparent and that such attacks have happened many times in Afghanistan.

In 2009, five Afghan girls briefly slipped into comas and nearly 100 other pupils needed treatment after an alleged gas attack against their school. Taliban sympathizers also were blamed for that incident.

http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanistan_poisoned_schoolgirls_takhar_province/24552396.html

iraniam · Apr 18, 2012

Pulitzer-Winning Image Source Of Pride, Nightmares For Afghan Photographer

View attachment 828D0901-DD0A-41C4-80E9-9EFA1E29CFDB_w640_r1_s_cx1
"In the blink of an eye, Tarana's surrounding's were filled with blood. The dead and injured bodies of her relatives surrounded her," Massoud Hossaini recalls. (This is a cropped version of the winning photo, which can be seen in the slideshow below
Tarana stands erect amid the dead and injured at her feet, her blood-stained hands opened as if asking, "Why?" Tears and blood stream down her face, her mouth agape.

It is a heartbreaking image, one that captures the ubiquitous violence that has befallen Afghanistan, and for that it has been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for breaking-news photography.

But for the man who took the picture, the photo that has earned him international recognition leaves him conflicted, a reminder of the traumatic experiences he encounters as a news photographer in one of the world's most violent places.

Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini recalls the day he took the award-winning image vividly. It was December 6, 2011, on the occasion of the Shi'ite festival of Ashura.

As participants of a festival procession gathered outside the Abul Fazel Shrine in Kabul, a powerful blast went off. Standing just 15 meters away from the blast, Hossaini was spared major injury by the hundreds of mourners between him and the suicide bomber.

Hossaini rushed toward the center of the blast, which killed more than 70 people and injured scores more. There, as the smoke cleared, he saw the 10-year-old Tarana, dressed in green, screaming amid the chaos.

"In the blink of an eye, Tarana's surrounding's were filled with blood. The dead and injured bodies of her relatives surrounded her," Hossaini says. "Among them were her brother and playmates. This caused her to go into shock, which led her to stand in the mayhem and cry in pain."

Showing Afghans' Pain To The World

Despite his own shock and shrapnel injuries to his arm, Hossaini continued to shoot pictures. When he was done, he rushed back to his office at Agence France-Presse to upload the images for the world to see.

"The procession was drenched in blood, but I was still responsible for covering it. This sense of responsibility motivated me to continue taking pictures," he says. "So I covered that tragedy from many angles so that people around the world could see what pain I saw that day and what pain we observe almost every day in similar incidents."

Afterward, Hossaini sought treatment for his wounds and retreated home to his family. He soon began receiving telephone calls -- his photograph of Tarana had appeared on the front pages of major U.S. newspapers, including "The New York Times", "The Washington Post," and the "Los Angeles Times."

"To me the picture showed to the people of the world what had happened in Kabul that day. What had struck Tarana and what had I witnessed," he says.
Proud, Despite The Suffering
It was a point of pride for the 30-year-old photographer, who after fleeing to Iran to escape the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan had worked as a tailor to raise money to buy his first camera.

He documented subjects close to him -- the reformist movement in Tehran and fellow refugees living along Iran's border with Afghanistan.

Hossaini returned to his native Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There he took various photojournalism courses and joined Agence France-Presse in 2007.

This year, his hard work was awarded, multiple times. He is currently in Holland to receive second prize in the Spot News category for the 2012 World Press Photo contest, which was awarded for his photo of Tarana. Next, he will head to New York to pick up his Pulitzer, and a $10,000 prize.

While Hossaini expresses satisfaction with his awards, they have also left him with conflicting emotions.

"I am happy that, as an Afghan, I am able to reflect the suffering of Afghans. But I am unhappy over what happened and that I witnessed it," Hossaini says.

"I saw Tarana in that condition and I am even in contact with her now. I know that she has nightmares about it just as I do."
http://www.rferl.org/content/pulitz...de_nightmares_for_afghan_winner/24552687.html

iraniam · Apr 21, 2012

Bahrain Grand Prix: Protester found dead after clashes with authorities

Opposition leaders in Bahrain said the man's body was found at a site in Abu Suiba, a district of southern Manama, where protesters had clashed violently with security forces during Friday night.

Five people were reported to have been arrested, and one of them, named as Salah Abbass Habib, was beaten badly. His body was found on the roof of a building in a nearby village, the opposition party Wefaq said.
They released a photograph of Habib's blood covered body splayed out on a corrugated iron rooftop. He was apparently found wearing a tear gas mask.

The other arrested people had not seen him being beaten and police have now sealed off the area.
Protesters had flooded a main highway on Friday in a march stretching for miles.
The government allowed the massive Friday demonstration in an apparent bid to avoid the hit-and-run street battles that are the hallmark of the Gulf nation's 14-month uprising – and an embarrassing spectacle for Bahrain's Western-backed rulers as F1 teams prepare for Sunday's race.

But violence flared as small groups in the march peeled away from the route to challenge riot police, who answered with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.

Some protesters sought refuge in a shopping mall and nearby shops about 12 miles north of the Formula One track, where practice runs took place and Bahrain's crown prince vowed the country's premier international event would go ahead.

On Saturday morning the authorities deployed armoured vehicles on the streets of the capital and the main road leading to the race track.

Last year, a wave of anti-government protests by the island's Shiite majority and a crackdown by the Sunni rulers forced organisers to cancel the 2011 Bahrain GP.
At least 50 people have been killed since the start of Bahrain's uprising – the longest-running in the Arab Spring – which seeks a greater political voice for Shiites and to weaken the near monopoly of the Sunni dynasty that has ruled for more than 200 years.

"We demand democracy" and "Down, Down Hamad," chanted some of the tens of thousands of opposition supporters in reference to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, as they massed on the main highway leading out of the capital, Manama. Bahrain's monarchy is the main backer of the F1 race, and the crown prince owns rights to the event.

Hours before the march, Bahrain's most senior Shiite cleric, Sheik Isa Qassim, delivered a strongly worded sermon that denounced authorities for making dozens of arrests of suspected dissidents in recent weeks. He called the intensified crackdowns before the F1 event "as if we are entering a war."

Bahrain's rulers lobbied hard to stage this year's Grand Prix as part of attempts to portray stability in the strategic kingdom, which is home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet.

On the opposite side, human rights groups and others campaigned to keep the race away, citing the relentless pressures by security forces and the imprisonment of opposition figures – including a Shiite political activist on a more than a two-month-long hunger strike.

The US-based group Physicians for Human Rights also said it was concerned about the near daily use of tear gas in Bahrain, including in crowded urban areas and homes, and its possible long-term health consequences, including increased rates of miscarriages and birth defects.

"Despite promises of reform since our investigation into the Kingdom last year, the Government's excessive use of force has only increased," said Richard Sollom, the group's deputy director.
The hacking collective Anonymous, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a denial-of-service attack on the official Formula One website in protest over the running of the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend. Such web attacks work by overwhelming a site with bogus traffic.

Shiites account for about 70 per cent of Bahrain's population of just over half a million people, but claim they face widespread discrimination and lack opportunities granted to the Sunni minority. The country's leaders have offered some reforms, but the opposition says they fall short of Shiite demands for a greater voice in the country's affairs and an elected government.

Bahrain's crown prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, visited the track Friday and rejected any suggestion that the race should be scrapped.

"I think cancelling the race just empowers extremists," he said. "For those of us trying to navigate a way out of this political problem, having the race allows us ... to celebrate our nation as an idea that is positive, not one that is divisive."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ound-dead-after-clashes-with-authorities.html

iraniam · Apr 23, 2012

Assad’s forces kill 80 nationwide despite presence of U.N. monitors

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 80 people nationwide on Monday, most of them in the city of Hama, local monitors reported, despite the presence of a team of U.N observers.

Regime forces pounded the Hama neighborhoods of Masha’a Alarba’een and Alarba’een, despite U.N. observers’ presence in the city, according to Local Coordination Committees.

Activists said the bombing in Hama intensified following the visit by U.N. monitors during which thousands of people took the streets in mass protest against the regime.

“The U.N. observer mission visited the neighborhood yesterday and a large protest came out to welcome them despite the military and security snipers present on the building in front of the U.N. observers. As soon as the U.N. observer mission left the neighborhood the security forces began threatening us in the neighborhood that they would take ‘revenge.’ They opened fire onto civilians injuring many,” activist Mosaab Abo Jehad told right group Avaaz.

Elsewhere in the country, Syrian forces shelled several neighborhoods in Homs, Al Arabiya television reported citing Syrian activists. The forces also launched a wide scale attack on al-Bukamal early Monday, killing four people, the Syrian Shaam News Network reported.

The attacks come one day after the violent military operations carried out by
the government forces in the Damascus suburb of Duma and in Deraa on Sunday, which killed at least 22 people, according to the Syrian General Revolution Commission.

Internet video footage that activists said was filmed in Duma on Sunday showed grey smoke rising from buildings and the sound of heavy gunfire in the background. One clip showed soldiers in helmets and bullet-proof vests next to a tank.

The official news agency SANA made no mention of fighting in Duma but said that at least one officer was killed by a bomb that struck a convoy of army officers and cadets in the northern province of Aleppo. Another bomb targeted a freight train transporting flour in Idlib province, it said.

Shaam reported two strong explosions in al-Khaldeya neighborhood on Sunday, despite the presence of the U.N. peace monitors.

A small group of unarmed observers has been operating in Syria for a week, overseeing a 10-day-old truce agreement that has curbed some of the violence but failed to bring a complete halt to 13 months of bloodshed.

In Damascus, Syrian government forces shot at protesters in Nahr Aysha; while two massive demonstrations went out in Kafr Soussa from al-Fateh and Bilal al-Habashy mosques on Sunday night. The two protests later merged together, Al Arabiya reported, citing Syrian activists.

On Sunday a group of monitors visited the central city of Hama and nearby town of Rastan. Internet video footage which activists said was filmed in Rastan showed observers walking through the town accompanied by rebel fighters.
Hama, where Assad’s father crushed an armed Islamist uprising 30 years ago, killing many thousands of people, has been quieter since the ceasefire took effect, according to a local activist who identified himself as Musab.

“We don’t see the tanks any more, they just hide them in government installations,” he told Reuters. “But the troops are still around. The truce has an effect but not to the extent that we can demonstrate freely.”

The U.N. Security Council agreed on Saturday to increase the mission to a 300-strong observer team, part of international envoy Kofi Annan’s plan to halt the killing and launch a political dialogue between President Bashar al-Assad and opponents seeking his downfall.

Annan said the council’s decision was a “pivotal moment in the stabilization of the country” after more than a year of turmoil in which more than 9,000 people have been killed.

In a statement, the former U.N. secretary-general called on both Syrian government forces and opposition fighters to put down their weapons and consolidate the ceasefire accord, according to Reuters.

Assad’s adversaries say his forces have continued shelling opposition strongholds in violation of the truce, while authorities say “terrorist armed groups” have kept up a campaign of bombings against government targets.

Western and Arab ministers meeting in Paris last week described the observer mission as a “last chance” for peace in the major Arab country. The United States said that if Damascus did not permit an adequate monitoring process, the Security Council should work towards imposing sanctions on Syria.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/23/209613.html

iraniam · Apr 24, 2012

Syria’s Assad will go ‘dead or alive,’ says Tunisian president

Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad is “finished” and will eventually leave power “dead or alive,” his Tunisian counterpart Moncef Marzouki said in a newspaper interview published on Tuesday.

“The Russians, Chinese and Iranians,” who have been supporting Assad since an uprising against his rule erupted last year, “must understand that this man (Assad) is finished and that it is no longer possible to defend him,” Marzouki told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat daily.

“They must convince him to quit power and hand it over to his deputy,” he said.

“You will leave, in one way or another,” Marzouki said addressing Assad.

“You will leave, dead or alive. It is best for you and your family to leave alive because if you decide to leave dead, this would mean that you will cause the death of tens of thousands of innocent people.”

“You have caused enough bloodshed already.”

The United Nations estimates that more than 9,000 people have died in Syria since the uprising began in March 2011.

In an attempt to oversee a ceasefire, 30 observers are expected in Syria in the coming days pending the arrival of an expanded team of up to 300 observers approved by the U.N. Security Council.

But it will be up to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to determine whether the situation is safe enough to deploy the 300 observers for an initial 90-day period, as part of a truce brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan.

“I don’t think it (Annan’s mission) will succeed as the number of observers is too small. Three hundred people can do nothing. In Kosovo there were 2,000 observers,” Marzouki said.

Nearly 60 people were killed on Monday in violence across Syria, the majority of them civilians, from government shelling and gunfire in the central city of Hama, despite the presence of U.N. monitors, a monitoring group said.
The Syrian government did not abide by its commitment towards the six-point plan of the U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah al-Muallemy, said early Tuesday.

Addressing a Security Council session, the Saudi envoy said that Assad’s regime continues in the killing and suppression of the Syrian people, Al Arabiya reported.

Syrian troops killed scores of civilians in the city of Hama, monitors said, as U.N. military observers toured protest centers near the capital.

The persistent bloodshed 11 days into a ceasefire sparked growing criticism from opposition activists of the fledgling U.N. mission, which still numbers just eight observers out of a planned initial deployment of 30.

Despite concerns over the mounting violence that the U.N. says has left over 9,000 people dead in 13 months of fighting, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon gave the go-ahead for the deployment of 300 ceasefire monitors to Syria from next week.

Ban insisted Monday that the government President Bashar al-Assad ensure the protection of the unarmed observers and allow them to travel freely throughout the country.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/24/209932.html

iraniam · Apr 26, 2012

Syria: Massive explosion in Hama 'kills 70'

Up to 70 people have been killed in an attack on a house in Hama, according to Syrian activists.

They said several houses in the Masha at-Tayyar district in southern Hama were destroyed by a big explosion.

State media said 16 people died in the blast in a house used as a bomb factory by "armed terrorist groups".
The violence comes despite a UN-brokered ceasefire - part of a peace plan proposed by the joint UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
Scud attack?
Following the blast in Hama, activists posted video on the internet showing a scene of devastation, with bodies being pulled from the rubble.

One report said 13 children and 15 women were among the dead.

They said the blast was caused by government shelling or even a Scud missile attack.

The opposition Syrian National Council has called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting "so that it can issue a resolution to protect civilians".

It says nearly 100 people have been killed in Hama in recent days.

The level of devastation seen would have been difficult to achieve by conventional shelling, the BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says.

State television showed pictures of injured children in hospital and says that a group using the house to make bombs detonated them accidentally.
The reports cannot be independently verified owing to government restrictions on foreign media.

Meanwhile, a video has emerged which purportedly shows a man being buried alive by security forces, allegedly for sending material to TV stations.

Its authenticity could not be confirmed.

The unnamed man, who is said to be a media activist, is seen pleading for his life as earth is shovelled over his head. He then goes silent.

What appear to be members of the security forces are then heard cursing him for receiving money for sending material to Arabic satellite TV stations.

The video was said to have been leaked by sympathisers.

Continuing violence has been reported across Syria since a ceasefire was introduced earlier this month - including in towns where UN observers are present.

France now says the Security Council should consider the use of force in Syria if Mr Annan's peace plan fails to stop the violence.

The plan calls on Damascus to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from cities.
"Totally unacceptable"
Mr Annan told the Security Council on Tuesday that the Syrian military had not withdrawn from population centres.

He condemned as "totally unacceptable and reprehensible", reports that troops entered Hama after UN observers departed on Monday, and carried out summary executions as punishment for having spoken to them.

Two observers have now returned to Hama. They form part of a small advance team, ahead of a team of 300 that the UN would like to deploy.

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said, via Twitter, that he had sent a message to Kofi Annan to "set the record straight on several aspects of the Annan plan".

Mr Moualem is reported to have told him that there had been "more than 1,149 documented and verifiable violations from armed elements" since the ceasefire began.

The US permanent representative to the UN, Susan Rice, told reporters on Tuesday that all Security Council members wanted the observers to be deployed quickly.

Ms Rice said that it was hoped 100 observers would be in Syria within a month, but said Syria had made clear it would not admit UN staff from any country in the "Friends of Democratic Syria" group.

The UN says about 9,000 people have died since pro-democracy protests began in March 2011. In February, the Syrian government put the death toll at 3,838 - 2,493 civilians and 1,345 security forces personnel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17851122

iraniam · May 4, 2012

If Iran had not supported the Syrian Baath regime

For years now, Iran has been supporting the Syrian Baath regime — the ideological cousin of the Iraqi Baath regime against whom Iran carried out the longest war of the century. Syria has become one of the few friends Iran has left, after it was blatantly sanctioned by the West, the U.S and other states in the region after the Islamic revolution. In fact, Iran often preferred to promote this relationship as having exaggeratedly more geopolitical value than it really had. Not unlike the existence of a resistance movement in the very unique political, social and geopolitical structure of Lebanon. In other words, the political thread of Iran-Syria-Lebanon is based on as many exaggerations and speculations as the “Iranian Threat” that is inflated by the West, the U.S and Israel.

Let’s leave aside the above mentioned clichés for a moment — because these approaches truly have been turned into clichés. Moving beyond these readings, which have become impossible to verify or falsify, will clear the path for different perspectives. Let our question be this: What kind of political picture would emerge had Iran not provided support to the Syrian Baath regime?

1. First of all, the geopolitical platitudes mentioned above would have been dismantled.

2. We would have seen evidence of the existence of the front dubbed the “resistance front” by Iran.

3. It would have become apparent once again that Syria, from which Hamas was forced to withdraw, was not actually a genuine supporter of the Palestinian cause.

4. The claim that Iran’s reaction to the Homs Massacres in 1980s was not a political preference but a necessity would have been confirmed after twenty years.

5. Iran’s apparent support for the overthrowing of the Baath regime would irritate Israel and the United States, which Iran has long categorized as enemies. The reflection of this irritation to the region would have been felt by all anti-democratic administrations in close relationship with the U.S.

6. Withdrawal of Iran’s support from the al-Assad rule would have seriously contributed to the normalization in Iraq. It would have created important opportunities toward the reconciliation of ethnic and sectarian factions.

7. Adherence to a foreign policy that did not stand in front of the change in Syria would have turned Iran into an important contributor of change in the region. An Iran that defended change in the region would have help actualize democratization in the region - more importantly within its own territory - without having given losses to conspiracies and external scare tactics.

8. The absence of support from Iran to a sectarian family-gang administration would have softened the sectarian tensions antagonizing our region. The path would have been cleared for an entirely different discourse on the Middle East. Most Western geopolitical readings and calculations would have been rendered meaningless.

9. Had Iran been able to stand against the massacres committed by the Syrian Baath regime, its Islamic revolution and its struggle against the Iranian Shah (and the order represented by the Shah), would have become important historical events that are mirrored by the Arab uprisings today.

10. Had Iran been able to distance itself from the al-Assad regime, it would have paved the way for reevaluating not only the (collapse of the) Camp David Order, but also of the post-World War I order.

(Published in Hurriyet Daily News on May 4, 2012)

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/05/04/212127.html

iraniam · May 9, 2012

Syria blast near UN convoy going to Deraa

An explosion has hit a Syrian military truck escorting a convoy of UN observers near the city of Deraa, just seconds after UN staff had passed by.

The head of the UN team, Maj Gen Robert Mood, was in the convoy, but neither he nor any of the other monitors was hurt.

Eyewitnesses said at least three Syrian soldiers were wounded. The windows of the truck were shattered.

The observers are in Syria as part of the joint UN-Arab League peace plan and began deploying last month.

There are now about 70 monitors in Syria but their presence has had no effect in quelling the violence.

Deraa was where the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.
An Associated Press reporter travelling in the UN convoy said the explosion blew out the military truck's windows and caused a plume of thick black smoke.

It is not clear who was behind the blast. However, the opposition Syrian National Council is blaming the government, saying the explosion is part of a campaign to drive the UN monitors out of the country.

Maj Gen Mood condemned the blast, saying the observers would remain focused on their mission.

"This is a graphic example of violence that Syrians do not need. It is essential to halt the violence in all its forms," his spokesman told a news conference in Deraa, according to the AFP news agency.

Meanwhile, the BBC's Lyse Doucet, who has been to the Syrian city of Homs, says there is constant shooting there, despite a ceasefire between government and opposition forces.

Our correspondent, who spent the night in Homs, also heard heavier weapons being fired.

She saw UN observers patrolling the city but said entire neighbourhoods were deserted.

In other developments, UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told the Security Council that arms were being smuggled in both directions between Lebanon and Syria.

"What we see across the region is a dance of death at the brink of the abyss of war," he told reporters later, AFP reported.

Violence was reported in several parts of the country on Wednesday, including the northern province of Idlib and the city of Hama.
Two members of the security forces were killed by gunmen in the eastern town of Deir al-Zour, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Also on Wednesday, Syrian troops fired across the border into Lebanon, killing an elderly woman and wounding her daughter, Lebanese officials said.

The UN estimates about 26,000 Syrians have fled across the border to Lebanon, most of them in the north.

On Tuesday, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan told the Security Council that his peace plan could be the "last chance to avoid civil war" in Syria.

He told a closed session that the plan was "not an open-ended commitment" and highlighted continuing violations.

Mr Annan said he was particularly concerned that torture, mass arrests and other human rights violations were "intensifying".

He also told the council that President Assad bore "primary responsibility" for ending the military campaign.

The UN says at least 9,000 people have died since pro-democracy protests began in March 2011. In February, Syria's government put the death toll at 3,838 - 2,493 civilians and 1,345 security forces personnel.

Syria heavily restricts access to foreign journalists and the reports cannot be independently verified.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18001942

Log in or Sign up

Middle East mega thread (WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES.)

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

xenubarb Member

Anonymous Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

Anonymous Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

Jacky Blue Note Member

Zak McKracken Member

Anonymous Member

Zak McKracken Member

Zak McKracken Member

Zak McKracken Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

Anonymous Member

iraniam Member

lulzgasm Member

Anonymous Member

iraniam Member

Mutante Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

iraniam Member

Share This Page

Customize Theme Colors

Predefined Skins