Syria, Ghouta Massacre(s): Visual Evidence that the Victims were Prisoners

Syria, Ghouta Massacre(s): Visual Evidence that the Victims were Prisoners and Unflattering Before-and-After Pictures of those Prisoners
May 12, 2015 
(incomplete)
last edits January 30, 2017

In our research into the Ghouta incident of August 21, 2013, we (the general research community of A Closer Look On Syria - ACLOS) have found some cases of deaths that contradict the rebel narrative - Some deaths cannot be attributed to any "Assad" Sarin-rocket, some  can be pinned on someone in the rebel crowd, and some show recurring signs that many or all of the victims were Syrian civilians who had been imprisoned by anti-Assad rebels, for whatever mix of reasons, and fatally gassed by them - mainly in confined spaces (basically, improvised gas chambers).

Being a conscious plan, that could be done at a coordinated moment of their choosing. Consider the timing of the "Assad" attack that baffles so many - just as UN CW "inspectors" had landed a stone's throw away in Damascus, and exactly one year after Obama first announced his "red line" offer to help the rebels out ... if a CW attack was proven. That would be a good moment to chose, wouldn't it?

The sheer scale of death - a widely parroted "estimate" of 1,429 or what I call "x-hundred" (probably under 1,000 but enormous) - tends to suggest a gas chamber efficiency. In fact, some rebel reports try to explain why it might almost seem that way in places - people hid in basements, sometimes dozens in the same one, and sometimes started burning tires there, before the gas got really concentrated and killed all of them. We kind of suspect this isn't the literal truth, but it might be a distorted glimpse of it.

We suspect the largely foreign Salafist brigades of FSA, al-Nusra, and especially the Islamic Front led by Zahran alloush, themselves intentionally gassed the victims to get "Assad" in trouble - it would mean enough were on hand that the x-hundred could be knocked off all at once chemically  just to blame "Assad" and get Obama's "red line" crossed - and maybe even get a Libya-style NATO "humanitarian" air force in place to help the rebels get even more Syrian enemies in their grips.

It may sound outlandish to anyone who believed the rebel claims; the victims were their friends, family, and neighbors. They were probably mostly Sunni but it was irrelevant - they were killed randomly in the streets and in their homes just off those streets, brought to field clinics dead or nearing it, and were past saving in well over 1,000 cases.

But consider the cases (those with "Before-and-After" below) where victims seem to have suffered further harm after getting into these supposedly protective hands. These are seen in one state in one image, apparently alive, and then there's another image where they seem to be truly dead and in a visibly worse state. And in between, only rebel helpers were around to cause that. These before-and-after images, to the extent they pan out as that, are very unflattering to the anti-Assad militants, and suggest the victims were never friends of theirs. Rather, they seem like human chattel the rebels felt free to barter away in pursuit of deals with world powers bent on destroying Syria.

1 Starved Men: These three guys - gassed randomly in Jisreen, perhaps (not verified, but described as taken there) - had the prior misfortune of being denied food for a span of some days. This is 2 degrees too skinny in all cases. Of course people starve easier when they're held captive, and we can see rebels had their bodies after death, if not beforeAlso note that just after the incident, in late August and through 2013, people started starving clear to death in large numbers in different areas of Ghouta, for rebels to document directly and blame a supposed "regime" food embargo. Others in a similar state wound up in the government system at the same time, it seems, and got included in the "Caesar" photos. But as in the non-Caesar cases, one should ask how did rebels get to these poor souls with cameras as soon as they're dead - here offed a bit early by the chemical attack - but completely fail at getting to them with food before they died? There is no human decency embargo "Assad" can impose to explain it, but some people - including many children - in rebel-held areas get entirely cut off from food. Here are three of them, I think - previews.

2 Captured Shabiha? This case is far from certain, but too compelling to ignore. Neveah West made a video shortly after the attacks called Syria Undeniable PROOF SNC & Al Farok did Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria 8 21 2013. I think it is somewhat deniable, but has at least a few likely leads from correlating tons of photos and videos and claiming several matches of rebel people to supposedly other people and, more important, matches between seen victims and known rebel captives - most of them described as Shabiha (singular, Shabih), meaning fighters of the local popular committees, later called National Defense Forces (NDF) (details here). The "Shabih" seen at 5:55 captured by August 18 is quite consistent with the guy shown next struggling from poison gas on the 21st in Damascus. But it's had to be sure.

Other guesses in that video are less clear, but to me one really stands out as compelling. At 6:46 is a post-capture video of an unusually fair-haired Syrian man who's been injured but remains defiant, in civilian clothes but held along with soldiers. The posting date is September 1st, and the date is specified too in the title: "Syria Rebels capture Assad Baby Killer Shabiha "Payback's a Bitch." But this is only a no-later-than time, and he bears some resemblance to a guy already killed in the attack, implicitly with two related boys.

This scene is from a corner of the massive display of about 200 bodies I've dubbed "WhiteMorgue," likely a mosque, likely in Douma. The tape on the boys' foreheads give the victim numbers 2 and 4, so the man is probably #3. So implicitly they were among the first ones there. (#1 may be a wrapped body, maybe woman, unusually placed near a man) However, the boys at least were brought from elsewhere, like most, and just numbered first; they're seen at opposite ends of the Hamouriya pool scene (as described) like several other kids in this WhiteMorgue, including three next to them (see correlation at right). This means #3 might be among the men laid next to that dry pool, but not that I can make out - he might well have died somewhere else.

This implied family didn't die like this, but were arranged so after death. If that's just livor mortis reddening the man's face and shoulders, he was laid most of the time after death with his head and shoulders at least down - hanging off the tailgate of a truck, perhaps - before his remains were laid flat like this. And #4 (right) was carried by the arms before being arranged in this pose, but some hours after death, when rigor mortis set in. In fact both boys already have about this pose as they lay in the pool earlier.

The man and boys all appear possibly related; fair, redish hair, and husky build - all fairly unusual. Someone (I forget where and who) said this guy was identified as an unmarried man with no kids and these were someone else's. Maybe these are nephews? Or maybe whoever said that was wrong and these are his sons. Maybe they were tracked down elsewhere and reunited in death. And then quite likely they just picked the fair-hared kids and laid them with him in a made-up family.

Why make a point of having him hugging these kids? No other victims in the WhiteMorgue, or anywhere I've noticed in the Ghouta body displays, is set up like that. One man does have his arm under a baby, at filming time, but otherwise, only this guy does - this guy who looks a bit like the "babykiller Shabih" slated for some "payback," perhaps involving babies of his own or related, at a time quite possibly just before the massacre.

How much like him does he look? The video is not very clear. His hair may be shorter, facial hair fuller, pattern match not clear - I actually am not sure at all this is a match, but I sure as hell wouldn't dismiss it based on such low-quality video. And the circumstances make me sure enough it's worth putting out there anyway.

Further info: Mohammed al-Saeed's long video from the WhiteMorgue shows these three with dialog (see 7:18)  This is worth getting translated (anyone?). A fair-haired rebel hanger-on does much of the talking - is he claiming to be a relative and to know the story here? Why picks out this guy to explain? DoumaRevolution on Tumbler posted the photo used here with an unusual caption, from "Coordinating Douma" (local coordinating committee, rebel leadership), translated it says only: "Any guilt killed." Why did they have to mention possible guilt with this one?

3 Irbeen Accommodation Clues: This might mean nothing, but it might mean something. Two photos of victims in a morgue in Irbeen (see by district part 3, Irbeen) at least show some detail in the background. These cropped views are at right. The wall there is plastic sheeting fastened tight over wall studs, then a pillar, then open space to the right. The high angle of incoming light in the lower view suggests this is a basement.

We see extra bedding piled on about 4-5 full-sized pieces of luggage. Were lodgers living in this basement where corpses now lay? Or did the gas victims pack all this up before rushing to the clinic?

Around the corner, nearer the sheeted-off room, we see a big green 44-liter gas canister of the kind seen in the Kafr Batna basement-level DarkMorgue. Were unsuccessful medical efforts undertaken right here as well? To the left of the green tank, a brown shelf or maybe a brown tank? Behind it, what might be a blue barrel, maybe of the same type as the blue barrel set aside up on the right (it's not the same one - that's barely visible at this angle but hiding back there). Also note on the right maybe a wheelchair, an office desk, and a strangely blurry and distorted morgue helper, maybe a ghost.

I'm kidding on that last point, but it's a spooky scene. It's possible to read too much into these contrasted signs of sub-standard lodging, gas tanks, and large-scale chemical death all in one place. But heck, isn't also possible to read too little into it?

(notes on gas tanks or cylinders: a Bing image search suggests oxygen ones tend to be blue, specifically sky blue, as seems natural. This picture suggests someone thinks light blue = O2 and green means either helium (no medical use likely to be relevant here) or hydrogen (H2 - no medical use, just industrial,) But they can be re-filled with other things anyway, depending on the technical details - even if that color-coding info is correct) I'm not sure what a brown cylinder is supposed to hold.

Here's the same scene a week or so later, from NBC News video. Note two green tank and blue barrel(s) maybe just visible back there. The luggage, likely the same pieces, is slowly being re-arranged/removed, maybe gone-through. If patients brought this in, it was all from the ones who died, apparently. Sack of clothing is maybe from luggage the owners weren't going to re-use, ever. The box of other objects might for other objects found in the suitcases. The object(s) on the left, like a miniature plastic laundry basket on a white-drizzled object, remains.

4 Before-and-After: Nosebleed Boy (Irbeen): This is an unidentified composite victim, based on deciding the boy seen in three different images being the same one down the line. It seems likely, as all three images come from Irbeen (see by district, part 3, Irbeen), where a reported 23-30 children total died. In this small pool, we have 3 images of a boy or boys of about 12 or 13, with a similar square-ish face, darkened eyes, distinct eyebrows, off-center prominent front tooth, large rounded lips, consistent freckle near left eye, and consistent nasal issues in all 3 cases. Chances of this being the same boy: not quite 100% but close enough I'm calling this a single composite victim. He's in a clinic in Irbeen with children seen in the morgue above, but he's not clearly included in that display.

And he's an unusual victim, seen alive and getting treatment, having that ceased, and then getting some unseen mystery treatment - maybe in the basement we just looked at. And that, most likely, finally caused his death. The pictures here say all we had to start with, with the sources and some technical considerations laid out in  this ACLOS discussion.

From that, it seems the top image shows an endotracheal tube in place, with a nasogastric tube (nose to stomach) as well - a standard treatment for someone who's stopped breathing or is in a comatose state, to protect the airways from vomit, for example. This process often irritates or disrupts the nasal lining and can cause nosebleeds. At lower left, order unclear, his nose is too red for simple irritation to that area, he had a nosebleed but it stopped, with some residue not wiped away. The final image shows the same boy is the only serious nose bleeding victim I've noticed - others have mucous and blood mixed. And as far as I've noticed, this is also the only nasal tube patient (though I was never really looking for that before and might've missed other cases).

Another obvious difference between the bottom images is besides the freckle there all along, he's got more "freckles" now - little scars or marks added to his lower face, and was also apparently subjected to another chemical exposure that was fatal and an irritant, renewing that nosebleed with a vengeance. Something like chlorine could explain that, besides a number of other common chemicals rebels surely have access to. The little marks are what's harder to explain. I have no theory yet, but similar appear in some other cases (next section), and I suspect it's somehow a clue to the overall crime.

5 Other Marked Faces 

Before-and-After: Hani Abo al-Qasab, civilian, adult male, from Jobar, died who knows where, taken to Douma and buried there, per his VDC martyr's database entry. Why does that contain two photos of the same man, both seemingly dead but one with a different look and little marks on his face? (cropped and compared at right) I'll just ask that and cut this one short for now.

Others with no before image, moved below

6 Haircut Kids (Ain Tarma)
This case first explored here in about the same way, under Ain Tarma but with Jobar and other connections as well (the whole record is confused like this).

Left: Rida Mohammad Ali al-Baladi, boy (girl's name, usually) from Jobar, buried in Ain Tarma. Right: Yousef Mohammad Ali al-Baladi, boy, from Ain Tarma, or Jobar but died in Zamalka (has 2 entries). There are also two adult males of the same names Reda and Yousif Baladi, from Zamalka and Jobar. That's five entries, probably for what looks like maybe one child appearing different before and after something bad (you'll be tempted to call Yousif's eyebrows heavier, but note the difference in lighting and thus glare, which makes eyebrows appear lighter). Both pictures are supposed to show dead people, but the Rida (left) at least is not obviously dead. If this is one child, the redness is probably no clue of the bad thing, but it proves he/she is dead by then, but with an added mark to the nose and the lower lip. The face with a red half is from livor mortis, with his/her head turned to the left for some hours after death.

Siblings as listed, or before and after? It's really hard to be sure. If it's two, then this doesn't even count as a before-and-after thing. But we could still wonder why a boy and a girl - as the names suggest - seem to have the same exact haircut - especially if they are identical twins. It's kind of short for a girl, long for a boy, with no real style, but it looks kind of good on them, kind of punk. It also means they had the same haircut, this short or shorter, at the same time, however long ago. That's not at all unusual for siblings, especially if they get the same cut anyway.

However ... noting the gender and hairstyle ambiguities of the above case, it's quite interesting that another victim passed through Ain Tarma is a short-haired girl Riham Muhannad Tieba. VDC says she died in Ain Tarma ("martyrdom location") but came from Mleha (shown dead and alive on the page, both compiled at right). That's a district with no other victims listed coming from, to the southeast, across the Ain Tarma valley and next to Christian-majority Jaramana. As we can see, she died with shorter hair than usual, pretty much the same un-style as the Balladi children, but with hints she was trying already to shape it back to normal (down). She also seems to have suffered the mild-seeming death the Baladis did, no sign of pain and coughing up blood, like some other victims passed through Ain Tarma.

However long it takes hair to grow this long, it's worth wondering if these 2-3 children all had their heads shaved at the same time. That might be due to an outbreak of head lice in the ... displaced peoples' hotel (?) they all wound up in ... and then they also wound up in the same place(s) where poison gas killed a bunch of people ... or it was all the same place and they never moved because they weren't allowed to? 

Because, you see, the "Assad regime" cannot micro-manage things like this. Rebel authorities connected to the "legitimate representatives of the Syrian people" in Turkey did the moving around of people and shaving of heads in East Ghouta in those days. These kids were more than likely among a group of civilians imprisoned for an extended time by... someone able to do that in this rebel-held area.

7 Before-and-After: M015 (Kafr Batna): We may be able to narrow down a victim ID guess on this one, but it's less likely than usual and we'll likely only ever know him as M015, in a system devised by Denis O'Brien PhD in his 2014 study Murder in the SunMorgue (see on-site summary article with link to the original work). There's a broad argument there about how these people died that is far more important than this one unusual death, but it serves as a smoking gun that the rebels wanted these people dead, badly enough to do it themselves. Here is a not-so-great graphic I finally threw together (video forthcoming) to make a singular visual explanation for this important detail so few people know even now, a year on.

Video!

Pictures and text: Top: an image from apparently just before dawn as the SunMorgue is being filled. M015 is just being brought in/up on a stretcher. His face is covered with a small white sheet, hands on his belly, relaxed, not bound in front like some (that's for body handling, not a clue of captivity)

Middle: during one of the mid-day videos of a fuller morgue, we can see where he was laid - right next to where he was in the last photo, next to the boy (B004) and near the feet of the woman wrapped in aqua green (W00..) But by now, he's got blood coming out of the head-neck area, and his right hand has flexed, clenching into a half-fist clutching the fabric of his shirt - meaning he was momentarily more alive than presumed, but then died again (cadaveric spasm) Where is the blood coming from? Nowhere visible. His neck is covered up now instead of his face. And in at least one video frame it can be seen that blood is soaking up into its middle, right over what could be a linear slice or, as other victims show, a small round hole instead (apparently they think this is less obvious). It almost has to be in the major arteries of the neck - we can see it's a lot of blood, meaning he is/was alive with a pulse - they took a full-size bed-sheet of the kind we can see covering some victims here  and wadded it beneath his head and less so under his neck. Already it's absorbed enough at the neck part that it's overflowed onto the floor in three directions.

Bottom: a bit later in  the afternoon was a set of photos showing an emptier SunMorgue as most of the victims were removed - in the same spot M015 was is the same "bloody, blue blanket" O'Brien made such a careful study of - it got soaked through entirely, looking like a single lump of bloody tissue laying there, the same overflow pattern evident but worse. Dead people simply don't bleed that much, and there's no reason anyway to slice the throat of a guy who's already dead anyway.

As the photo and video record makes clear, this M015 at least managed to survive the chemical massacre, and it was up to the morgue's managers to finish him off. Of course messed-up survivors don't help get sympathy and air support like "martyrs" do, and if they survive to speak of their ordeal they might even do serious harm to the rebel cause. So they murdered this survivor right there in broad daylight, just did it between video/photo sessions. We can see that this happened and was apparently approved and slightly covered-up. What remains in question is how unusual or how telling the fact is for the mass-death of the rest of these x-hundred victims...

8 M012
Yet another victim of a likely throat cutting is seen in the same Kafr Batna morgue just feet away from M015 (see middle part of above video - sharpness enhancement suggests his skin flays out there, and so it is a cut and not some other neck-based object like necklace or shirt collar.)

9 Slaughtered by Islamists Days Before the Rockets (Zamalka)

There's a handful of victims, reported as 9 and visually at least 8, including 5 children aged about 1-10, who are the only victims of the attack we get to see in situ, in the home or place where they allegedly died. And this place has been geo-located in the right area - right between two rocket impacts. victims are seen mainly at different levels in a stairwell, illustrating the rebel claim they rani in here and up the stairs to escape the Sarin cloud, but didn't do it quick enough and died where they did. But As explained at the ACLOS page Zamalka Ghost House and clearly enough, they died too early and too violently to be what's described.

These 8-9 people may have been, as described, and "entire family," but they could not have been "killed by chemical weapons attack on Damascus." One case that's clear in this is the adult male victim who shed lots of blood in this spot. And he has a neat little hole, not a slice, in the middle of his throat. That's likely where the blood came from, and not caused by any "Assad chemical weapon."

Note also that this victim is badly decayed - bloated, puffed-up tongue and eyes, discolored and starting to ooze fluids - he's been dead at least 4 days in the summer heat, maybe close to a week. All the other victims appear about the same, very icky. The video is filmed about 36 hours after the alleged Sarin rockets landed right around this house. We're supposed to presume this is a mystery sign of the "Assad's" brand of Sarin, but it would be a kind that causes rapid decay, and holes in throats. Not buying either of those.  

Next, the house: it's unfinished and vacant, not anyone's home. They weren't here long, not the slightest bit covered in the dust the place is full of. It's as if they just ran in here and got killed. The woman shown here has no dust on here silk trousers. But she does show signs of Islamist murder; a nasty slice to the right forearm is visible. And something also made blood come out her mouth and nose. Unlike the man, she was likely killed elsewhere and just laid here.

Note what she's wearing: a black winter coat, in late August. A second woman seen with baby girl further up wears the same kind of coat, a bit more tattered. Homeless people dress like this, to keep their valuable coat when they have nowhere of their own to hang it. Captives allowed only a few clothing items would be kind of the same, and would wear their coat during any prison transfer, even one that unexpectedly turned into a massacre.

So in the Zamlka ghost house, the clues suggest these 8-9 alleged Ghouta chemical massacre victims were prisoners of the rebels, taken to an abandoned building and executed with blades and maybe guns about 1-4 days before the alleged Sarin attack. In fact, the blamed rockets - fired from a rebel-accessible area north of Jobar - may have been aimed largely so as to land around these "stair-climbing" victims and use that to help paint their picture. But the viewer has to squint a bit for that to work (and many did).

10 Raed al-Homsi Civilian, from Ain Tarma and died from Chemical and toxic gases on August 21. Possible relative, Emad Muhammad Khier Al-Houmsi, also of Ain Tarma, also died in the massacre. Homsi means "from Homs" - it can be a real name, or a way of saying "we don't want to say their name, but they fled from Homs to Damascus, and we caught up with them here." Raed has a photo, at right. That was some swift cloud of Sarin vapor to get to him before he bled to death out the hole in his throat. Or, did they maybe get the cause of death wrong in this case, like they did with M-015 and 012 in Kafr Batna, the Zamalka Ghost House victims, and Safi al-Nabki (see below)?

11 More Marked Faces with no Before Image

Left: a boy seen in the corner of the Kafr Batna SunMorgue...mark to forehead, under chin, not clear if significant.

Center: same morgue, an older boy - mark on front of chin, and one of at least 4 SunMorgue victims exuding apparent mucous from the nose or mouth. In this case, its runnier than usual, but darkened. This may actually be vomit or something, or it may be a sign that he was confined somewhere where they filled the air with smoke, as some victims reportedly did to themselves for no given - or sane - reason. The Jobar medical point director says this happened in Ain Tarma at least, where he also ran the medical point for a time.

Right: unnamed adult female victim (as it appears) in Irbeen, judging by image stamp. Consistent blackening of likely prior wounds near eye, corner of mouth, under the chin. Black suggests heavy smoke? (black nostrils are the best clue, but can't see here) Maybe a sharp, localized chemical burn to the edge of her nose? Her lips got badly irritated anyway. She bled from the mouth a bit, and died with mucous, dry and thick as tree sap it seems, clogging her nostrils. This suggests maybe she was dehydrated for a time before being hit with something like chlorine that triggers bronchorrhea (mucous from the nose) - something seen with several unidentified victims "buried in a cemetery in Ain Tarma Jadida" (see by district part 5, Ain Tarma) To get such a concentrated dose itself suggests she was in a confined space anyway, and that the poison was probably released right there, not something that drifted in. The likely knife wound under her chin is probably from some earlier incident(s) of her likely captivity by anti-Assad rebel forces.

So far, this doesn't show much of a single, clear pattern. But this line of investigation might yield a usable pattern or two, if more examples can be located.

At right, VDC Martyr #94546 Unidentified woman from Jobar, per VDC records, wrapped in a blue spider man blanket (cropped here). She has mucous clogging the nasal passages, dark rings around eyes, notable burns or marks on her lips.

VDC doesn't say where she was taken to, but she's probably the larger person wrapped in such a blanket seen in some views next to a row of children's bodies in the Irbin basement space (as seen above, with luggage and gas cylinder). She was perhaps considered a woman first and then a girl, despite her proper (for "liberated" areas) adult dress. Irbeen's tally changed from 17 women in the first reports to 16 later. She might be the difference, and this might suggest she was identified by someone, if they knew her age).

12 Before and After: Safi al-Nabki
On August 21 in Douma, something pummeled this man's body, especially his eyes. Something didn't like his eyes, or skull, and beat the hell out of them, just beat him to death, it appears. His head is bandaged, but he died anyway. He seems to have an unclear greenish object in his mouth. The rebel (coordinating) media office there said don't know - unidentified guy they found killed by "barbaric shelling." That's per a video and notes posted by Douma revolution on Tmblr.

However the VDC lists the same guy (it looks like to me) as a victim of the day's poison gas attack, the only CW victim listed as from Jisreen district (spelled Jesreen) and identified fine as Safi Khaled Al-Nabki - 92786 (possible pseudonym still: Khaled means immortal, and Kabki means from Nabk, for what it's worth). Here, he's non-civilian: FSA member, shown with rifle.

So VDC hears he was FSA. Did the local rebels just not know that?  Was it even true? If so, did a group less inclusive than the FSA decide to take him out for some reason? Etc. Was he offered up as a token local fighter someone didn't like anyway, and then even reported as a Sarin vapor victim? He's listed immediately after victim 92785, Muhammad Aakash Balla, the only martyr of the gas listed as from Saqba. He was also a local FSA fighter, with photo and video that's a better fit - unscathed outside, inside leaking yellow fluid, could be fake or real. But him and Safi were reported together in a pair of oddball entries. Interesting.

* Other
forthcoming. Taking submissions and question via comment)

"Newcomers"
Jan. 2017 addition: A non-visual source I had seen but lost track of, just re-located. Reuters heard (via Washington Post) from Zamalka activists by skype, one of who offered an explanation why many were unidentified:

Most of the dead were identified by a relative, a friend or a neighbour. But many were newcomers, Syrians who had been displaced from elsewhere. "We found entire families dead in their homes, and no one in our community knew who they were," said an army defector and media activist who used the nom de guerre Mohammad Salahedinne. One family had scribbled the name of their town, Jarba, on the wall of their living room, and that was how local people figured out their place of origin. 

Now, these "displaced" people have bad luck in the rebel areas they wind up living in. It's said they ran here for protection or freedom, from somewhere else, to escape something bad and government-related in their home town. But maybe they fled from, or were kidnapped by, terrorists and taken as hostages to another area, to await their fate in a basement. Here, they specify one family ran away from Jarba - here on Wikimapia, just NW of Otaybah, well within areas disrupted by Islamist occupation at the time.