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Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses

NEW YORK – Armed opposition elements have carried out serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today in a public letter to the Syrian National Council (SNC) and other leading Syrian opposition groups. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.

Kidnappings
A number of witnesses told Human Rights Watch that non-state armed groups identifying themselves with the opposition are kidnapping both civilians and members of the security forces. “Mazen,” a Syrian activist, told Human Rights Watch that members of the Abu Issa group in Taftanaz, a village north of Saraqeb, Idlib, told him that they had kidnapped people who worked with the government and tortured three of them to death. “Mazen” also said he spoke to a member of the Syrian security forces who was kidnapped and detained by opposition fighters in Saraqeb:

    The detainee told me he was a first assistant in the National Hospital in Aleppo … I asked the revolutionaries to bring him to me so I could speak to him. He said that opposition fighters had beaten him with electrical cables on the head … and he was blindfolded. He said they let him speak to his parents … and that they asked them for money to release him.

“Samih,” another Syrian activist who said he has worked closely with the FSA in Saraqeb, told Human Rights Watch that while he was there he saw residents of Saraqeb complain to the FSA on more than one occasion that the Al-Nur battalion, a Salafist group that is not part of the official FSA structure, was kidnapping civilians for ransom. He said, “The people in Saraqeb were fed up with the battalion and asked the FSA to intervene but the Al-Nur battalion did not respond to the FSA.”

Torture
Human Rights Watch has reviewed at least 25 videos on YouTube in which Syrian security forces or their alleged supporters confess to crimes under circumstances in which it appears that their statements were made under duress. At least 18 of these videos show detainees who are bruised, bleeding, or show other signs of physical abuse. Human Rights Watch cannot independently confirm the authenticity of these videos.

In one video, three people described by the accompanying text as shabeeha are asked their names, where they are from, their religion, and what they are doing in Tal Kalakh. They are shown on their knees during this interrogation, their hands bound. The face of one is clearly badly bruised. All identify themselves as Shia, from el Rabwie, Homs, and “confess” that they had killed peaceful protesters.

In another video bearing the emblem of the FSA Khaled Bin Al Walid battalion, an unnamed person described by the accompanying text as a shabeeha member is interrogated. He appears bound and his face is bruised. At the end of the video, he denies an allegation against him and the interrogator calls him a liar, tells the videographer to stop shooting, and directs someone off camera to bring him the “electricity machine.”

Executions
Other video footage reviewed by Human Rights Watch and information received in interviews indicates that members of armed opposition groups have executed people in their custody whom they suspected of crimes against the opposition.

Foreign Terrorist Organizations   [No Salafist terror groups?]

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

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