Jag återger nedan uppgifter ur rapporten från ”Moon of Alabama”, som komplettering av min artikel tidigare. Kan vi lita på Amnestys nya rapport om Syrien?

1) Of all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions (page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something they have been told of.

2) The numbers of people Amnesty claims were executed are – at best – a wild ass guess. How come that Amnesty can name only very few of those? On page 30 of its report it says:
” Former detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.
and
3) Former prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.
Those 95, some of whom may have been ”executed” – or not, are the only ones Amnesty claims to be able to name. That is less than 1-2% of the reports central claim of 5,000 to 13,000 executed. All those witnesses could provide no more details of persons allegedly killed?

4) The exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells
The ”torture” claims by the ”Syrian Network for Human Rights” (SOHR), a group in the UK connected to British foreign intelligence, are also unverified. SOHR is known for labeling armed non-military Syrian insurgents (i.e. not foreigners) as ”civilians” even if they die while fighting the government.
Kommentar: SNHR har nära band till ISIS och finansieras av USA,Saudiarabioen och Qatar enligt Tim Anderson, författare till ”Det smutsiga kriget mot Syrien”.
5) The report is padded up with before/after satellite pictures of enlarged graveyards in Syria. It claims that these are a sign of mass graves of government opponent. But there is zero evidence for that. Many people have died in Syria throughout the war on all sides of the conflict.
6) The report talks of ”extrajudicially executed” prisoners but then describes (military) court procedures and a necessary higher up approval of the judgement. One may not like the laws that govern the Syrian state but the courts and their procedures seem to follow the ruling law. They are not extrajudicial.

7) In its Executive Summary the Amnesty report says that ”Death sentences are approved by the Grand Mufti of Syria and …”. But there is no evidence provided of ”approval” by the Grand Mufti in the details of the report… Amnesty International may dislike that but Syria is a secular state. The Grand Mufti in Syria is a civil legal authority for some followers of the Sunni Muslim religion in Syria but he has no official judiciary role.
8) Syrian law includes a death penalty for certain severe and violent crimes. Before 2011 actual executions in Syria were very rare, most death sentences were commuted. Allegedly the laws were amended in late 2011, after the war in Syria had started, to include the death penalty as possible punishment for directly arming terrorists.

MoonofAlabamas slutsats.

It is quite likely that the Syrian military and/or civil judiciary hand out some death penalties against captured foreign and domestic ”rebels” it finds them guilty of very severe crimes. It is fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other extreme groups well known for mass murder and other extreme atrocities. It is likely that some of those sentences are applied. But the Syrian government has also provided amnesty to ten-thousands of ”rebels” who fought the government but have laid down their arms.
The claims in the Amnesty report are based on spurious and biased opposition accounts from outside of the country. The headline numbers of 5,000 to 13,000 are calculated on the base of unfounded hypotheticals. The report itself states that only 36 names of allegedly executed persons are known to Amnesty, less than the number of ”witnesses” Amnesty claims to have interviewed. The high number of claimed execution together with the very low number of names is not plausible.

The report does not even meet the lowest mark of scientific or legal veracity. It is pure biased propaganda. Jag hittaringa motargument

Några artiklar om Amnestys rapporter om Syrien.
Amnesty: Mycket tveksam organisation med dåliga rapporter om Syrien 5/11 2016
Tillförlitlig Amnesty-rapport om Syriens fängelser?22/5 2016
Amnesty:Ny partisk och otillförlitlig rapport om Syrien 22/12 2015 och 1/1 2017
Åtta problem med Amnestys rapport om Syrien22/7 2015
Amnesty om Syrien 9/12 2012
Amnesty:Propagandaorgan för USA,UD och storfinansen 6/9 2012

i Andra om: mänskliga rättigheter, imperialism,Amnesty, desinformation, Syrien, USA, politik, tortyr, flyktingar, terrorism, Ryssland, demokrati