Latest news with #SJAC
CBC
13-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Human rights investigators race to document Syria killings on social media
Hundreds of civilians in Syria have reportedly been killed amid clashes between interim government forces and pro-Assad regime loyalists. But far from happening in the shadows, the killings — in some cases, summary executions in fields and villages — have been widely publicized: often posted first on Telegram groups, and shared widely across social media. The content provides a glimpse into what's happening on the ground during Syria's ongoing civil war. And human rights investigators are racing to collect and analyze it all — in some cases, before it's deleted by the perpetrators or removed by social media moderation systems. Gathering and analyzing the videos is a crucial step in establishing a base of facts and a foundation for future investigations or accountability efforts. "It's very important for us to do that quickly because automated content moderation can often remove harmful or graphic footage if it's reported — even if it's not reported, if it's just flagged automatically as violent content that may be in breach of platform policies," Benjamin Strick, director of investigations for the U.K.-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), told CBC News. "Even some of the content from the weekend where we saw an increase in violence has been removed." Verifying killings The CIR has launched a new project documenting violence in Syria — including against civilians — in response to the recent killings, which began after fighters loyal to the deposed Assad regime, toppled in December 2024, reportedly ambushed government forces last week, killing civilians. The fighting spiralled into revenge killings perpetrated by both government and non-government forces in areas populated by members of the Alawite religious minority — though they are the second-largest religious group in Syria — a group to which former president Bashar al-Assad belongs. Already, multiple human rights groups have released reports combining official figures, eyewitness testimonies and verified video from social media to shed light on what is occurring. Those include the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Syria Justice and Accountability Center (SJAC). Collecting and verifying videos of killings posted to social media can help separate truth from misrepresentation, Strick said. Numerous videos circulated online in the wake of the violence, showing old incidents of violence that were portrayed as happening recently. Verifying footage also gives the public essential insight into what really occurred in detail during the campaign of killings, where victims may not have taken videos, but the perpetrators have. "It's really identifying what happened on the ground," said Strick. CBC News' visual investigations team, working with the SJAC — an NGO whose stated goal is "meaningful justice and accountability for Syria" — has verified the authenticity of three videos circulating online and collected dozens more that remain unverified. CBC News journalists collected videos, some of which SJAC also shared. Using reverse-search tools and analyzing them for identifying uniforms and insignia, the team determined the videos hadn't been previously shared. We shared these uniforms, patches, and insignia with SJAC researchers, who confirmed CBC's findings and added detail. CBC News is showing only static portions of the videos because of their graphic nature. The victims in the videos have not been identified. In one, gunmen wearing the uniforms of Syria's public security forces drag a person dressed in civilian clothes into an alley before shooting him. Five bodies can be seen in the video. Another gunman, dressed in black, can be seen filming the bodies with a phone. A photo shared by Syria's state-owned news agency indicates that at least one of several men arrested for participating in extrajudicial killings was present in this video. In a second video, a group of men wearing black uniforms emblazoned with the Syrian flag drag a person into a ditch beside a road, beat him with rifles and then shoot him. The camera pans, revealing a truck covered with the insignia of Syria's security forces. In a third, two men fire at a body on the ground, which was moving moments before. They're wearing fatigues and patches that appear to be the Seal of the Prophet insignia worn by various Islamic militias in the country. At least one more body is visible — it's unclear whether they are alive or dead. Arrests of government forces members made In the violence, 172 members of security, police and military forces were killed by Assad-linked fighters, according to a statement from the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) sent to CBC News. At least 211 civilians, including a humanitarian worker, were killed in direct shootings carried out by these groups, the organization said. "It was just panic mode, calling on armed groups and anyone who can join to fight to help to back the government," Noura Aljizawi, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, told CBC News. Revenge killings ensued along the coast. Witnesses told The Associated Press that Alawites were shot dead in the streets and at the gates of their homes. Alawite houses were also burned and looted, witnesses said. Government-aligned groups were responsible for the deaths of 420 civilians total and disarmed fighters, including 39 children and 49 women, the SNHR said in a preliminary report. WATCH | Clashes in Syria leave hundreds dead: More than 1,000 civilians reported killed as violence in Syria spirals 4 days ago Duration 3:14 The UN is urging Syria's interim leaders to protect civilians amid fighting between security forces and those who remain loyal to ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Former army personnel allied to Assad have been carrying out co-ordinated attacks and ambushes since Thursday. CBC News could not independently verify these numbers. The UN says it has verified 111 total civilian killings in the clashes, with the process ongoing. Syria's interior ministry said Tuesday it had arrested four people in connection with attacks on civilians. A televised report from a Lebanese news agency also showed that two other men have been arrested, and linked them to a video circulating online wherein two men on a motorbike spot another man in civilian clothing and execute him, seemingly at random. Identifying crimes from social media Aljizawi told CBC News that videos posted online by armed groups have been key to identifying crimes in the past. "Many of the atrocities that we identified … were through videos and photos they took themselves and they posted on social media," she said. "It's not unique to the Syrian conflict." Among the videos that circulated online were older videos of killings being passed off as being from this week. "Oftentimes there's a level of propaganda that surfaces online to either downplay, discredit or just undermine the events that happen on the ground," said CIR's Strick. Disinformation helps further divide Syrians, Aljizawi said, as pro-Assad forces can claim the acts were undertaken by the new interim government, while others may use the videos to deny that atrocities occurred in the first place. "It's harming victims. It's harming the community. It's harming this very fragile, very critical transition. And it's not absolutely not helping in making peace or any sense of stability in the country."
Al Arabiya
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under al-Assad regime, report says
More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture, or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites. In the report, shared exclusively with Reuters, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery, and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus. Reuters did not examine the documents and was unable to independently confirm the existence of the mass graves through its own review of satellite imagery. But Reuters reporters did see signs of disturbed earth in images of many of the places pinpointed by SJAC. Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC. Shadi Haroun, one of the report's authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions. Death came in many forms, he told Reuters. Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear 'occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.' Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors. 'A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,' Haroun said, describing a cellmate's plight. In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria's security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment, and killing of regime critics. The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly, and none were available to comment. 'Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in al-Assad's prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,' said a colonel in the new government's Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker. 'Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the al-Assad regime,' he said. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when al-Assad's crackdown on protests spiraled into a full-scale war. Both al-Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments, and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country's prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people. The SJAC said all the survivors it interviewed were tortured. The report focuses on the first years of the uprising, from 2011 to 2017. But some of the testimonies from former regime officers based at Mezzeh detailed events up to the regime's fall. The Mezzeh military airport was an integral part of the al-Assad government's machinery of enforced disappearance and housed at least 29,000 detainees between 2011 and 2017, according to the report. By 2020, according to the report, air force intelligence had converted more than a dozen hangars, dormitories, and offices at Mezzeh into prisons. SJAC, a US-based Syrian-led human rights group funded by European governments and, until the recent funding freeze by the Trump administration, the US government, said its estimate of the dead comes from two air force intelligence datasets listing a total of 1,154 detainees who died there between 2011 and 2017. The datasets were leaked in a Facebook group monitored by SJAC as the regime collapsed and cross-checked by the organization against documents and witness testimony. The estimate does not include people who were executed after being sentenced to death by a military field court set up inside a hangar. According to witness testimony in the report, officers and soldiers were executed by firing squad, while civilians were hanged. Two witnesses said many of those executed were buried near the hangar. In December, the US Justice Department unsealed war crimes charges against two ranking Syrian air force intelligence officers over 'the infliction of cruel and inhuman treatment on detainees under their control, including US citizens, in detention facilities at the Mezzeh Military Airport.'
Arab News
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
DAMASCUS: More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites. In the report, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar Assad in December. Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus. Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC. Shadi Haroun, one of the report's authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions. Death came in many forms, he said. Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear 'occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.' Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors. 'A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,' Haroun said, describing a cellmate's plight. In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria's security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment and killing of regime critics. The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly and none were available to comment. 'Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad's prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,' said a colonel in the new government's Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker. 'Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the Assad regime,' he said. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad's crackdown on protests spiraled into a full-scale war. Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country's prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
LBCI
27-02-2025
- Politics
- LBCI
More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad: Reuters
More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites. In the report, shared exclusively with Reuters, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus. Reuters did not examine the documents and was unable to independently confirm the existence of the mass graves through its own review of satellite imagery. But Reuters reporters did see signs of disturbed earth in images of many of the places pinpointed by SJAC. Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC. Reuters
MTV Lebanon
27-02-2025
- Politics
- MTV Lebanon
More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad
More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites. In the report, shared exclusively with Reuters, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus. Reuters did not examine the documents and was unable to independently confirm the existence of the mass graves through its own review of satellite imagery. But Reuters reporters did see signs of disturbed earth in images of many of the places pinpointed by SJAC. Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC. Shadi Haroun, one of the report's authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions. Death came in many forms, he told Reuters. Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear 'occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.' Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors. 'A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,' Haroun said, describing a cellmate's plight. In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria's security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment and killing of regime critics. The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly and none were available to comment. 'Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad's prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,' said a colonel in the new government's Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker. 'Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the Assad regime,' he said. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad's crackdown on protests spiralled into a full-scale war. Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country's prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people. The SJAC said all the survivors it interviewed were tortured. The report focuses on the first years of the uprising, from 2011 to 2017. But some of the testimonies from former regime officers based at Mezzeh detailed events up to the regime's fall. The Mezzeh military airport was an integral part of the Assad government's machinery of enforced disappearance and housed at least 29,000 detainees between 2011 and 2017, according to the report. By 2020, according to the report, air force intelligence had converted more than a dozen hangars, dormitories and offices at Mezzeh into prisons. SJAC, a U.S.-based Syrian-led human rights group funded by European governments and, until the recent funding freeze by the Trump administration, the U.S. government, said its estimate of the dead comes from two air force intelligence datasets listing a total of 1,154 detainees who died there between 2011 and 2017. The datasets were leaked in a Facebook group monitored by SJAC as the regime collapsed and cross-checked by the organization against documents and witness testimony. The estimate does not include people who were executed after being sentenced to death by a military field court set up inside a hangar. According to witness testimony in the report, officers and soldiers were executed by firing squad, while civilians were hanged. Two witnesses said many of those executed were buried near the hangar. In December, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed war crimes charges against two ranking Syrian air force intelligence officers over " the infliction of cruel and inhuman treatment on detainees under their control, including U.S. citizens, in detention facilities at the Mezzeh Military Airport.'
