« SYRIA PRESS REVIEW » #44

Moral pressure heaped on Russia

The meeting of the Security Council was preceded by a powerful media campaign to discourage Russia from backing Syria. It revolves around two themes:
– The regime tortures children, claims Human Rights Watch (HRW);
– The regime is responsible for the "horrible massacre", the term used to designate the assassination of over 200 people in Homs.

The HRW report does not name victims. It does not point to a motive for the torture it relates. It alleges that the torturers forced their victims to recant their faith and love Bashar al-Assad, an allusion to a takfirist literary classic which accuses the Alawites of not being Muslims. It does not refer to torture centers as being in specific buildings, but on certain government premises where torture had actually been practiced in the years 70-80, that is to say at the time of the dictatorship.

The victims are people from Homs, both civilians and military, who were abducted by armed political or mafia groups, and subsequently executed. On the photos released by press agencies, several corpses have their hands tied, indicating that they could not have been killed by snipers or come under mortar fire during a demonstration, as contended by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (OSDH).

All those media which accuse the al-Assad administration being responsible for these crimes invariable use the same expression: "horrible massacre," which acts as a slogan. Gulf News speaks of "shock and horror" in reference to the military technique of "shock and awe". The magnitude of these crimes is such as to leave the witnesses in a state of stupor that prevents them from analyzing the situation and reacting.

On hearing the news, Syrian expatriates reportedly attacked four of their country’s embassies abroad. The Embassies in the UK and Kuwait were indeed ransacked without, however, any intervention by the local authorities.

• Le Monde journalist Marie Jego considers that if Russia supports Syria, it is because of her disdain for human life and that Putin is a remnant of Cold War paranoia.

• Mani, the Le Monde special envoy to Homs, attests that the "horrible massacre" was caused by a bombing by loyalist forces against the district of Khaldiyé. However, without fear of contradiction, he admits that the roadblocks in this sensitive area are manned ... by loyalist forces.

• In Le Figaro, Malbrunot commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Hama massacre (1982). Unlike his colleagues, he provides the context, but he omits to mention that he was in Hama at that time acting as French military intelligence agent liaising with the putchists.

• In Bremen, the German Greens are launching a fundraising campaign for the Syrian revolutionaries, dubbed "Adopt a revolution," reports the Tageszeitung.

• In the Corriere della Sera, journalist and nevertheless CIA collaborator Guido Olimpio draws a parallel between the announced visit of Sergey Lavrov to Damascus and the one that Yevgeny Primakov had paid to Saddam Hussein (1991). At the time, the Russian envoy had gained the confidence of the Iraqi leader to facilitate the international military intervention.

• In Il Giornale, the Vice-President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and major figure of the pro-Israel lobby in Europe, Fiamma Nirenstein, is concerned about the trivialization of the Muslim Brotherhood.

• In ABC, Daniel Iriarte is puzzled over the mystery of Asma al-Assad. Could the first lady, who made such a wonderful in Europe, be the accomplice of her murderous husband, or is she his prisoner?

• The Sunday Telegraph reports that Syria has released the mastermind of the 7 July 2005 attacks in London. Of Syrian origin, Mustafa Setmarian Nassar was allegedly one of Osama bin Laden’s companions. He has already been indicted for complicity in the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, those of 2004 in Madrid and 2005 in London. Kidnapped by the United States, he was allegedly sequestered at Guantanamo or Diego Garcia, and extradited to Syria - although there is no evidence of this -, and recently released.

• The Times of India reports that New Delhi stopped supporting Damascus once it had decided that the theory of a foreign infiltrated subversion was pure fiction.