Forensic Medicine vs, Lies in Syria

April 26, 2020
(rough, incomplete)
adds 4-30

The War Through the Eyes of Forensic Medicine (Part 1) is a fascinating documentary from Lebanese Al-Mayadeen's From the Ground program (which previously did an awesome show on the 2013 Latakia Massacres) This is filed by the same reporter, Ugarit Dandash, and was aired in March, now hosted by Arabi Souri and SyriaNews.

al-Mayadeen page
https://www.syrianews.cc/the-war-of-terror-on-syria-through-forensic-medicine-graphic/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bnL6vYMzOR5W/

This seems to be a part 1, suggesting there is/will be a part 2, which might cover the "Caesar photos," in which case I'll be very interested.
4-30: Michael Kobs, who alerted me to this show's existence, had to point out part 2 was already up and linked. That's here, with content (not covering the Caesar photos) to be worked in below.
https://www.syrianews.cc/the-war-of-terror-on-syria-through-forensic-medicine-2-graphic/

Dr. Zaher Hajjo

In part 1, Dandash speaks mainly with two informed experts:
- Dr. Zaher Hajjo - head, general association of forensic medicine, Syria (right)
- Dr. Bassam Muhammad - head, general association of forensic medicine, Homs (below)
In part 2 ...
- At least one other, female doctor ...
- ...

Dr. Bassam Muhammad, Homs

Dr. Hajjo especially is clear in underlining how forensic medicine has blocked lies against the state, helped them learn of emerging dangers, from professional snipers with better weapons than the Syrian army, to helping decode the ominous signs emerging in the torture and mutilation of citizens. Dr. Muhammad shares some harrowing stories from the early days in Homs, 2011.

Marie Colvin
The famous case of the journalist Marie Colvin is highlighted here. Dr. Muhammad explains how her body was found "buried" in Baba Amro in early March, 2012. This is shown, with little or no soil on her clothes (so lightly buried, and not for very long - she was killed on Feb. 22, in the last days before the government defeated all militants and restored order there). The photographs were interesting to me, but maybe unnecessary for the general public. Hence, no need to re-show them here. But what they show is important. As I'll try and read it for you:

- a messed-up seeming right eye, left eye invisible - it was the left eye she always covered with a patch, so this is part of her fatal injuries.
- partial dentures (or what is it, a bridge? the bolted-in kind, but now loose)
- small pock-mark injuries as from "shrapnel" (primary explosive fragments), apparently coming mainly from her right side
- a severe excavating injury to the left shoulder, now blackened with decay (and/or burnt?)
- some kind of redness, abrasion, and maybe breakage of the upper right arm, possibly explosion-related
- a cracked upper skull with a large (entry?) wound on the upper right side.

X-ray slides are also shared, showing no collarbone on the left, and a skull crack all along the front, besides an apparent nail in her skull that's said to show a "home-made grenade" (or nail-bomb?) killed her, not a weapon of the Syrian military. Otherwise, just small fragments are evidenced on her skin and in her leg x-rays (shattered bone at the worst of it), with fewer marks at all to the face and head, and those perhaps being upward from a low angle. I see no other nail impacts suggested, except perhaps in a longer gash to the right forearm. Something sizeable and round lodged in her right shoulder? Anyway, it's for more expert people to say what this all means.

Marie Colvin x-ray images

I haven't studied the Colvin story that much, except to assess the legal case made based on the "Assad Files" and mainly on the claims of defector "Ulysses." By this, Syria was tipped off by "Lebanese sources" as to Colvin's crossing, and Assad issued an order to "do the necessary." He may have, but that's allegedly a code-phrase meaning arrest her but also to kill if necessary. So Colvin's location at a media center was pinpointed, the regime tried arresting her by shelling the area around the media center (presumably with some kind of mortars), then closer, then on it. Then once people were killed an maimed, they stopped, let the media activists bury Colvin, and evacuate Paul Conroy, etc. Assad had gotten himself in deep trouble murdering a high-profile foreign journalist, mission accomplished. Was that really "necessary"? Also, there was no reflection of this whatsoever found among the million pages of "Assad Files," even the plausible order to "do the necessary" which - in documents that do exist - seems to means arrest them, monitor them, nothing else specific.)

Jisr al-Shughour massacre
At about 20:00 in they discuss the June 5, 2011 Jisr al-Shughour massacre (ACLOS page), which the reporter, Ugarit Dandash was eager to get to. There, just across the Turkish border, an unnaturally strong force of a nascent "Free Syrian Army" ... allegedly did little as soldiers and/or Hezbollah guys massacred each other in a major controversy over shooting some unarmed protesters. The death toll remains a bit unclear and disputed, including civilians killed in a general rampage, besides soldiers, police, postal workers, and other civil servants. Dr. Hajjo adds previously unknown details including how one man was cut in half longitudinally (which would take something like a chainsaw if I visualize that right), and another was forensically proven to have been buried alive. 90 bodies were found by a team including Hajjo, as he says, and at least another 15 are believed killed but were never found.

Robert Ford blocking the stench on a "sanitized" visit to JaS

At 22:00 Hajjo says how hostile powers had their experts come and ty to discredit the Syrian narrative, picking out supposed discrepancies - but he says their medical explanations were so convincing no one could challenge it; a Gulf Arab news channel's reporter said the Syrian case seemed to be true, and was simply replaced with a more compliant reporter. I'd already seen a BBC report conclude the same. The story was described as "sanitized" by a state-arranged visit for media and others, including US "ambassador" Robert Ford, who was criticized for even attending. Yet the Syrian government has still never been held to account for their alleged massacre of their own troops. No one's in trouble at all. If you haven't already, ask why.

The perpetrator, as Damascus sees it, was Lt. Col. Hussein Harmoush, a Salafist-leaning defector who headed the local FSA. After the massacre, he wound up in Turkey, talking to their intel service MIT, who were apparently backing and tracking his actions. But his own MIT handler was so personally sickened by the crimes he was forced to keep track of, he defied Erdogan to kidnap Lt. Col. Harmoush and have him smuggled back into Syria to face justice, which he apparently did. And there's an unusually happy ending to a still-tragic tale.
https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/10/hussein-harmoush-fsa-defector-profile.html

Note: the footage used at 20:17 of bodies dumped the river, is from Hama some 6 weeks later; Al-Qaeda-linked militants there had kidnapped and slaughtered at least a dozen "secret police" officers the night of July 31/August 1. That story that plays into this amazing article I wrote for 21st Century Wire that just destroys the fake "Assad Files" narrative of the "Committee for International Justice and Accountability."
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/11/revolution-unraveled-assad-files-now-an-achilles-heel-for-war-crimes-narrative/

Hamza al-Khatib
At 25:40 both doctors speak to the pivotal story of the boy Hamza al-Khatib, said to be arrested from a peaceful march on April 29, 2011 and killed on May 25 after a month's torture. Both of them emphasize how the "bruises" on his body said to show beatings was actually decay, as I've also said (bruises ae blue then yellow-brown, while these spots are green-going-on-black). The activists lied; he was fatally shot on 29 April and spent the next month slowly decaying under refrigeration, not suffering torture in a jail cell. The gunshot wounds that killed Hamzah were called cigar burns in some accounts, because they turned black ... with unacknowledged decay). As I've noted, he also lacks the shackle marks he should have if hanged by his wrists for a week, as alleged.

Other issues:
- Age of about 16 proven by forensic medicine? He's always looked to me younger than that, was noted by initial examination to lack body hair that's usually there by 16, is said to be 13, and his ostensible grave marker has him as 13 when he died or still 12 if it was on April 29, as I believe. He did appear unusually tall for that age, besides heavyset - clearly older than shown in his famous school photo - and Dr. Hajjo says the boy was more like 16, based on dental and skeletal details. I'll leave it disputed (maybe tall and 15-16 skeletally, but 12-13 otherwise?) Note that still no one has said he was in his 20s except in a mistranslation of "second decade" (age 10-20) and repetitions of that.

- Shot while defending the housing compound at Saida? It seems this is what Dr. Muhammad says here. Otherwise Hamzah is said to be among the people who walked there from other towns. Some 50 other men and boys were also reportedly killed in a "Saida massacre" - some shot that day and others arrested and tortured to death later. One woman was listed as killed by "shooting" by the opposition VDC (whereas the marchers seem to be exclusively male). She and the captain of the guard also listed by VDC at least seem to have been killed from within the compound, presumably by the attackers. Was Hamza as well? I still don't think so. His family seemingly lived elsewhere, in Jeezah. In fact that might have just meant shot during the defense of the base, in line with prior, vague claim-guesses. But to me the three gunshots suggests a strange sort of close-up execution, not accidentally gunned-down at random; it appears he was shot through each arm and into each side of his chest (from the left and the right), probably while bound hands-behind (why else would his arms and sides both line up like that?), as well as in the middle of the chest from the front. The other victims we can see on video have sporadic signs of execution, including stab wounds and likely torture. They also tends to have patches of green like Hamza suggesting that violence all happened on April 29.
- Severed penis: this was the most extreme of the claims against the Syrian government, and always denied by their official examinations and statements. The visuals - let's just skip the details - were always ambiguous to me, allowing for that denied mutilation (while far from proving it). The circumstances also allowed for it; the terrorists hiding in that "protest march" may have brought him, shot him, and dumped him all to demonize the state. Adding such a horrible mutilation would only make sense. It might have been denied in 2011 to ease tensions/because no one outside Syria would buy it. But I don't see these doctors now avoiding the charge on either basis, considering all the other incendiary crimes they discuss freely. So I'll defer more than I have - apparently even the terrorists refused to make that mutilation real.
Background: http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/04/re-considering-hamza-al-khatib-and.html

More Horrors
I'll cover other points more in brief (especially as I should cover part 2 here as well - unless it's super-interesting, which it might be.

Around 34:00 Dr. Muhammad relates a tragic story of a civilian kidnapped in Homs and tortured, including a bizarre surgical procedure to prevent him urinating. Three days after he disappeared, they set him loose in a car rigged to explode (on a signal? a timer? His rising from the seat?). As the story goes, he drove to security checkpoint, maybe on instructions or to seek help. As the story goes, on seeing the lone guard coming to greet him, he changed plans and backed the car up some ways before the bomb was detonated, killing only the tormented driver. Dr. Muhammad says this story was kept quiet at the time to avoid anyone copying the idea, but was reported to a UN-Arab League mission (the mission was initially sympathetic, but later re-staffed and made more hostile to Syria.)

At 40:00 Dr. Hajjo tells of a civilian accused of supporting the state who was kidnapped (region and time unclear) and then tortured so badly over a span of time that his wife paid the terrorists a hefty ransom just to have him killed so it could end.

Finally for me, at 37:15 Dr. Muhammad describes how the terrorists had (in Homs, 2011), carved all the flesh off one victim's face, head, and body from the chest up, most of which - if not all - should be done after he had died. I presume a forensic doctor knows this was done with blades, and extra-sick terrorists were at work in Homs; they did mutilate bodies and they might carve the flesh off people, and even eat it for all we know. The famous "FSA cannibal" Abu Sakkar (killed 2016) founded the Farouk brigades early on in Homs, and was perhaps active at the time of this episode, though he only became infamous in 2013 for a video-recorded bite into the (liver?) of a killed soldier. But FWIW that was a symbolic bite, a twist on mutilation - he didn't truly chew and eat any of it, that we see, and didn't spend much time carving out more than the one organ. And just to be a know-it-all, I'll suggest this - when I've seen skeletonized bodies or faces (where neither fire nor advanced decay is involved) - and they were left outdoors for any time - my first presumption is predation; feral dogs or wild animals ate their flesh as food. They have better motive for such a hassle of an operation. If his body was more covered or less appetizing from the chest down, that would fit the bill. But that should have been considered, and it's not what Dr. Muhammad concluded, so I defer, but only after mentioning the other option, just in case.