The Families’ Accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n Interviews with 18 families of the victims about their last known whereabouts further support the conclusion that the executions likely took place in the government-held area, Human Rights Watch said. Of the 18 cases investigated, 17 families told Human Rights Watch that their relatives had last been seen in a government-controlled area or after they set out to cross into the area through two checkpoints, one manned by opposition forces and the other by government forces.<\/p>\n
When the victims did not return, the families often searched for them, including at government hospitals, checkpoints, and security service offices, without results. Some victims were missing for several weeks before their bodies were found in the river, while others were found the next day. Local activists brought the bodies that they discovered in the river to a nearby school so that families could try to identify missing relatives. <\/p>\n
“Mohammed,” 26, a shop owner in the opposition-controlled area, disappeared on March 5. A relative who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that government forces had briefly detained and beaten Mohammed at the main government checkpoint 10 days earlier. Even though the government soldiers had warned him to not use the checkpoint again, he decided to accompany his mother-in-law through the checkpoint to the government-controlled area so that she could take a bus to her home in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood. Mohammed never returned after he left his mother-in-law at the bus station. His relative told Human Rights Watch:<\/p>\n
We started searching for him. We asked in the government hospitals and at the checkpoints, including the Karaj al Hajez checkpoint. They said that they hadn’t seen him. Every day we went to the school to look at the bodies. They found him stuck in the mud in the river four days after he disappeared. At first, I couldn’t recognize him because half of his face was blown away. I eventually recognized him because he had lost three fingers on one hand a long time ago. His wrists had marks as if his hands had been tied together.<\/p>\n
Most of the families interviewed by Human Rights Watch insisted that the victims had not been involved with the armed opposition or actively participated in demonstrations. They said, in many cases, that the victims were merchants. Some had shops in the government-controlled area but lived in the opposition-controlled area, and others regularly crossed into the government-controlled area to buy supplies that they sold in markets in the opposition-controlled area. <\/p>\n
On January 7, “Ahmed,” a 27-year-old merchant, and his nephew crossed the dividing line, as they had done before, to buy goods in the government-controlled area for their shop. After they arrived in the government-controlled area, Ahmed and his nephew separated. Ahmed did not return, and his body was found in the river on January 29. <\/p>\n
In a similar case, “Mahmoud,” 30, disappeared on March 9 when he left his home in the opposition-controlled area for a market in the government-controlled area where he was planning to buy supplies for his business. His father, who does not know whether he reached his destination, became worried when he didn’t come back as usual around 2 p.m.. He told Human Rights Watch:<\/p>\n
I searched for him everywhere. The next morning somebody told me to go to the Yarmouk school to look at the bodies there. When I saw my son with a huge wound in his head I fainted. My son didn’t do any harm to anybody. He was friendly to everybody. He didn’t even smoke. Why did he deserve to die like this? <\/p>\n
In two cases documented by Human Rights Watch, victims’ relatives said that former prisoners or contacts at local security service branches had told them that government forces had detained and held the victims in custody before their bodies showed up in the river. Human Rights Watch has not been able to verify these accounts.<\/p>\n
The Evidence <\/strong><\/p>\n A retired forensic expert working with the opposition told Human Rights Watch that he had examined more than 120 of the bodies and that the vast majority of the victims had been killed by gunshot wounds to their head, which in some cases had significantly disfigured the victims’ faces, making identification difficult. The expert said that the significant damage caused by the gunshots indicated that the victims had been shot at close range.<\/p>\n
Nearly all the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs with wire or tape, or marks on their wrists indicating that their wrists had been tied, he said. In some cases, the victims’ feet were tied together as well. Most victims’ mouths were sealed with tape. Some bore small burn marks that could have stemmed from an electric shock or cigarette, he said.<\/p>\n
A Human Rights Watch examination of more than 350 photographs of the bodies supported the forensic expert’s findings. Many of the photographs show victims with their hands tied behind their back, gunshot wounds to their head, and tape across their mouth. <\/p>\n
The dates for which the photos and videos show the highest number of victims were January 29 (57 bodies), January 30 (27), March 10 (21) and March 11 (10).<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch was not able to independently confirm the 230 figure provided by local activists, but found it plausible. Local activists explained that they do not possess photographs and video footage of all the bodies because families sometimes removed the bodies before they could be photographed. Activists also said that they started to systematically take photos of each victim only after many of the victims had been buried.<\/p>\n
In addition, bodies sometimes floated unnoticed further down the river during the night, further complicating the count. Yousef Houran, a lawyer with the Aleppo-based al-Shams Center for Human Rights and Forensic Investigation, told Human Rights Watch that local farmers had buried at least 40 bodies they had retrieved from the river further downstream. Houran’s organization is preparing a detailed report about the bodies.<\/p>\n
Source URL:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2013\/06\/04\/syria-stream-bodies-aleppo-s-river<\/a><\/p>\n Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n [1] http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2013\/06\/04\/syria-stream-bodies-aleppo-s-river<\/p>\n
[2] http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/bios\/ole-solvang<\/p>\n
[3] http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/middle-eastn-africa\/syria<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June 4, 2013 (London) – At least 147 people whose bodies were found in the city of Aleppos river between January and March, 2013, were probably executed in government-controlled areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}