SYRIA - House of Death

"Amnesty documents 'human slaughterhouse' in Assad's Syria" PBS NewsHour 2/7/2017

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SUMMARY:  Somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000 people were tortured and executed at one Syrian military prison between 2011 and 2015, according to Amnesty International.  A new report alleges that officials at the high level of government approved the killings.  William Brangham discusses the disturbing details and larger implications with Amnesty's Sunjeev Bery.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Amnesty International has just issued a report documenting what it says is clear evidence that the Assad regime in Syria has been illegally imprisoning, torturing and murdering political opponents.

William Brangham has more.

And a warning:  Some of the details here are disturbing.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Amnesty's report says that somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000 people were tortured and executed at one military prison outside Damascus between 2011 and 2015.

Amnesty alleges that officials at the highest level of the Syrian government approved the killings, as did the grand mufti of Syria, the highest ranking religious figure in the country.

I'm joined now by Sunjeev Bery.  He's Amnesty's director of advocacy for the Middle East and North Africa.

SUNJEEV BERY, Amnesty International:  Thank you for having me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Very, very troubling reading in this report and the stories of the people who were tortured and executed at this prison.

Can you tell me, who were these people?

SUNJEEV BERY:  There were thousands of civilians, as well as some ex-military officers, who are held at Saydnaya prison in Saydnaya, Syria.

We estimate that between 10,000 and 20,000 people are held there now.  And for years, on a weekly basis, as many as 50 people have been hanged in mass executions by the Syrian government at this prison.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  And are these people who are picked up — what are the crimes that they're accused of?

SUNJEEV BERY:  Many of them are perceived to be opposition to the government, although when you're doing this kind of mass arrest, mass torture and miss execution, who knows what the individual people's backgrounds are?

And, of course, peaceful, nonviolent opposition to a government is certainly not a crime.  But with that background, many of them are subjected to forced confessions through extraordinarily brutal torture, and once that confession is put via ink to paper, then the execution process begins.

OKLAHOMA - Botched Execution

My preferred execution for this A-hole is being put on a spit and slow roasted over hot coals.

"Botched execution in Oklahoma raises questions about lethal injection process" PBS NewsHour 4/30/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  In Oklahoma last night, an execution went terribly wrong after the state tried a new, untested combination of drugs in what was supposed to be a lethal injection.  Thirty-eight-year-old Clayton Lockett, convicted of shooting a 19-year-old girl and watching as friends buried her alive, wound up dying from a heart attack in what onlookers described as a gruesome process that took far longer than expected.

As a result, the execution of another convicted killer, which was supposed to take place two hours after Lockett’s, was put on hold by Oklahoma’s Republican governor.

Today, the White House press secretary deplored what happened:

JAY CARNEY, White House Press Secretary:  We have a fundamental standard in this country that, even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely.  And I think everyone would recognize that this case fell short of that standard.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Later in the day, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said the state is launching an investigation.  She said it will try to determine Lockett’s cause of death and whether the Department of Corrections followed appropriate protocols and make recommendations to improve standards going forward.

But Governor Fallin also defended the state’s death penalty law.

SYRIA - UN Report, Torture and Executions of Children

If you believe in reincarnation, this could be proof.  Bashar al-Assad as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler and the evil brought on the world.

"UN says children caught in Syria’s civil war suffer ‘unspeakable’ abuse" PBS Newshour 2/6/2014

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SUMMARY:  A UN report has found that in addition to the thousands of children who have been injured, killed or displaced as part of the war, the Syrian government has also tortured kids they suspect of being connected to the opposition, while others have been executed by armed opposition groups.  Judy Woodruff learns more from Leila Zerrougui, a UN special representative for children and armed conflict.

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  This week, the United Nations released a report on children and the Syria conflict.  It found that the Syrian government is responsible for thousands of deaths, and charged that it put children as young as 11 in prisons where they suffered — quote — “beatings with metal cables, sexual violence and mock executions.”

It also accuses armed opposition groups of summary executions of children.

Joining me now is one of the authors of the report.  She is Leila Zerrougui, the U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict.