Mick Hartley

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The hospitals were slaughterhouses

Mohsen al-Masri, a survivor of Assad's torture hospitals, tells his tale in the WaPo:

In a series of interviews, he described how he was tortured and interrogated over a two-year period in four detention facilities before arriving in a hospital at the heart of a nationwide system of brutality.

The hospital, known as 601, is not the only site of torture in Syria. But after it was seen in a cache of photographs showing thousands of skeletal corpses, it became one of the most notorious.

Inside the facility, about a half-mile from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s palace, sick prisoners are tortured as they lie shackled to beds crammed with dying men, according to Masri and former detainees and military personnel who worked there. Corpses have been piled in bathrooms, outhouses and anywhere else they will fit, then meticulously documented and trucked away for mass burial.

In interviews across Lebanon, Turkey and Europe, more than a dozen survivors and army defectors described horrors in Syrian military hospitals across the country for which war crimes lawyers say they have struggled to find a modern parallel….

Investigators say that testimony and documentation from Syria’s military hospitals offer some of the most concrete evidence to date of crimes against humanity that could one day see senior government figures tried in court.

“We were swept into a system that was ready for us. Even the hospitals were slaughterhouses,” Masri said in an interview last month….

Military hospitals across Syria have long set aside wards for prisoners. But since 2011, these have been packed with men left starving and broken by the conditions they have already endured.

More than 100,000 people have been arrested or forcibly disappeared in Syria since the country’s revolt began, according to a list compiled by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group…

Nicely timed to coincide with the latest from Washington, where we learn that "the United States is not now focused on making Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leave power…".

 

 

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3 responses to “The hospitals were slaughterhouses”

  1. djf Avatar
    djf

    “Nicely timed to coincide with the latest from Washington, where we learn that ‘the United States is not now focused on making Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leave power….’”
    Do you mean to imply that the Obama administration was focused on getting Assad out? Don’t make me laugh.
    The Trump administration is merely acknowledging the reality brought about by Obama’s eight years of single-minded devotion to the goal of not offending Iran. At this point, due to Obama’s malpractice, Iran and Russia have won the war for Assad. There’s not much we can do about it now, nor is there much point in denying reality.
    Bashing the current clown-like president may be fun, but that’s no excuse for trying transfer the guilt for the results of Obama’s catastrophic maladministration onto Trump.

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    No, I’m fully aware that the Obama administration’s Syrian legacy was a disaster, thanks. Nevertheless, this is now, and these are Trump’s people talking.

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  3. djf Avatar
    djf

    You seem to be blaming Trump for situation for which Obama is responsible that cannot now be changed. Whatever you think of Trump and his administration, I don’t believe that makes any sense. What do you propose the US do, at this late date, to get rid of Assad? Invade Syria the way we invaded Iraq, and end up in a war with Russia? Yes, we could have gotten rid of Assad at a reasonable price years ago (assuming that would have been the best policy choice). Obama and his stellar administration – Hillary Clinton! John Kerry! Susan Rice! Ben Rhodes! – deliberately chose not to do this. It is their responsibility.

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