May 22 Bus Hijacking - Houla Massacre Link?

Originally posted here, July 22, 2014

Re-posted here November 22, 2014

I'm not meaning to find things this interesting at the moment, but ...  As I just posted in graphic form here at ACLOS, there's some intriguing patterns in a reginal rash of violence on the same Friday as the Houla Massacre, and a bit of stuff right before and after. The details are discussed in the talk page there, worth copying here, but in reverse for variety.

First, a report from October, 2013:

Lebanese Al Manar TV reported the release of 9 Lebanese pilgrims after 17 months of being held captive by Qatari-backed terrorists in north of Syria.

On 22 May 2012 a group of terrorists stopped a passenger’s bus near the Turkish borders north of Syria and the passengers were held by a group of anti-Islamic Wahhabi terrorists with direct links to Turkish prime minister office and the Qatari Emir. The terrorists then released the women and children and kept 11 men captive, 2 of them managed to escape after a Syrian Arab Army operation in Azaz last year that killed one of the terrorists leaders responsible of the kidnapping.

http://www.syrianews.cc/kidnapped-lebanese-pilgrims-released/

I doubt this basic event - the taking of a busload of people including (Shi'ites, it sounds like, from Lebanon) three days before the Houla Massacre and a long ways away - will be disputed. Just where south of the border this happened isn't clear, but presumably way north of the al-Houla area. But another source might help narrow it down, and show the terrorists did not release all their women and children hostages. Nor the driver. Unless maybe there were two busses hijacked that day ...

here's the clincher story, part 1: VDC query - all Hama martyrs May 24 - 7 total. All but the top one play in here. Five represent a family:
* Natania Oreib Al-Saleem, Child - Male
* Yahya Oreib Al-Saleem, Child - Female
* Yakoub Oreib Al-Saleem, Child - Male
* Farouq Oreib Al-Saleem, Child-Male
* Fadwa Al-Shaddeh, Adult Female (mother) (details f/c as needed, available there, including (alive) photos).

These entries tend to say "Date of death: 2012-05-24," "Cause of Death: Kidnapping - Execution" Notes:

"The whole family, consisted of a mother and five children were kidnapped 2 days ago while they were on their way back from Sahl Al-Ghan to Hama. They were executed, and their corpses were found today in Mesyaf. They were slaughtered by knives." 

Note "Shabiha" or the regime aren't specifically blamed. The VDC, like the SOHR, accepts information from a variety of sources, so maybe no rebels even reported this, just alarmed locals. Who knows? There is apparently one child not listed - maybe not dead for all we know.

Sahl al-Ghan ... not sure how I figured out that means al-Ghab plain, aka Sahl al-Ghab. It's north and west of Hama, and part of the province - its northern panhandle I didn't know about, running north, flanking Latakia up to the Turkish border. It's a large, vague locale to return from. You might drive south to Mesyaf a bit south of its south end, then east to Hama. Or get killed anywhere prior and dumped in Mesyaf - not far from Aqrab, just 16 km direct.

This family wasn't driving their own car back from wherever as far north almost as Turkey. The other relevant victim on that list is Refaat Al-Hussein, adult male, killed also May 24 by "Kidnapping - Torture - Execution." Notes:

"He was a bus driver. He was transporting the family who was slaughtered. His corpse was found too with signs of torture."

So ... were there only the six passengers on his bus, or are these seven corpses the residue of a once-larger pool? The date of death isn't clear - found "today," apparently meaning the 24th, after being captured by some kind of bus hijackers two days earlier, is the best reading - so it should be May 22.

If the bus hijackings are the same, and both reports are accurate, we can say it was at the north end of the Al-Ghab plain not far from Turkey and the infiltration points there for foreign Islamists. And if this all lines up, these 7 or so victims of that then proceeded way south with some friends of their captors before getting dumped by the 24th just shy of the arena's edge for the coming Houla Massacre. This has its Aqrab connections  - fighters from there swooping south to help, victims from there dying either with the Abdulrazaqs in Taldou, in Aqrab, or both) - and alleged units of unknown foreigners, presumably filtered in via Turkey as usual. This Salem-Shaddeh family might've been the kind of thing a horde of fresh Ottoman mercenaries track in on their boots/sandals.

It might sound like grasping at straws except we must remember video evidence repeatedly backs the witnesses who describe a rebel attack on Taldou the 25th. They say that attack was huge, with 6-800 fighters total. That's an attractive (alleged) force, like a dry sponge is to water. Hundreds of people, probably more than were just hanging around already, would need to swoop in, probably from the north, at about this time, to fill the space that apparently was filled. So I propose it's quite likely the southward journey of that poor Syrian family and their driver is a valuable clue to understanding the Houla Massacre.

Update, August 4:
I just stumbled across the missing Oreib-al-Saleem child: listed as dying earlier, on May 22, VDC victim #16911 Shahd Oreib Al-Saleem], girl, age 4 (rounded down, it appears - see photo). Her notes are the same, kidnapped, slaughtered with knives. A Facebook page is provided: https://www.facebook.com/aribalsalim This was started on May 24 to share photos of the just-killed children. It's all in Arabic and I didn't check the content, but it seems to completely lack rebel colors and icons - and government ones. It was active at least into 2013.


From the VDC entry, her photo at left. What eyes. The name Shahed means "witness," it seems - a girl of that name had her mouth torn off a few days later in al-Houla. Again, what this episode suggests is a mappable movement of child-slaughtering terror towards the site of the Houla Massacre. And it's not from the Alawite villages just south of there, but from the distant and ominous Turkish border to the north. Someone should seal that thing off for good. I think little Shahed would agree.

Will Handing Seif al-Islam to ICC Stop the Fighting in Libya?

November 16, 2014

Amidst the general chaos in Libya, new fighting rages between different factions in Dernah, Al Qaeda central in the east of Libya. As the BBC reported on November 11, The "Islamic State" (ISIS, taken globally) is trying to gain control there, and might be up against regular Al Qaeda (both should be strong there), plus at least a third group recognized by the BBC, who say three main groups are fighting there. These have different levels of moderation, so the one BBC favors is clear: The known factions "are the Islamic Youth Shura Council, a branch of Ansar al-Sharia, and the more moderate Martyrs of Abuslim Brigade."

The third group being whoever aligned with "Islamic State," unclear. The BBC's activist source said it was a breakaway part of the Shura council. More scrutiny is probably needed before one blames this Shura council breakaway group. The moderate group here take their name from the Abu Salim prison uprising - advertised as a massacre - of al-Qaeda-linked militants and suspects detained after a CIA-MI6-sponsored assassination and overthrow attempt in 1996.

Anyway, in this millieu, BBC reports three activists were just found dead, beheaded, in Dernah. They name them as Siraj Ghatish, Mohamed Battu and Mohamed al-Mesmari. "Our correspondent says they remained low-profile, mostly passing on information via social media pages." The report notes beheadings like this are relatively rare in Libya. It probably is, compared to Iraq and Syria, pits of unknown and deepening barbarity, where Dernah had once the world's record of recruits-per-capita fighting and learning. It's been said they've been flocking back to Libya, and these beheadings seem like a bad sign - a blacker yet wind blowing into the void that was, until 2011, a solid green nation.

The same day, Human Rights Watch issued a statement (based on the preceding surge of violence in a similar vein) calling for action to solve the crisis; Islamists should stop fighting and agree to a "political settlement," and Libya should finally (force the Zintanis to?) hand over Seif Al-Islam Al-Gaddafi to be tried at the Hague.

They point to an International Criminal Court (ICC) statement to that effect as a beacon of light amidst a "deteriorating situation" and "soaring insecurity" with "grave abuses being committed by all sides," here in November 2014. The only side for HRW and the ICC, at one time over three years ago now, was the side of the "Gaddafi regime." But by now Muammar was murdered, along with several of his sons, some grandchildren, top ministers, aides and generals, loyal military forces, supportive civilians, and random "collateral damage" either tossed in a deep prison cell or stomped into their graves.

By now, that's not even one of the sides - or are they again? They're the only side then mentioned as needing fresh punishment at this point. HRW and the ICC feel that the long-jailed son of the martyred leader avoiding "international justice" is what drives the chaos that has plagued Libya ever since it stopped having a natural and functional government. This seems to be the opinion of Richard Dicker, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, who said “Security Council members should make clear that the state of impunity in Libya needs to end,” because it's become "a main driver for the country’s current instability.”

Note: he's not serious about this, or he'd be asking Libya's tribes to mange the hand-over, not distant "security council members" with no more credibility in Libya.

I haven't been following closely enough to have the best say on this, but it sounds pretty preposterous. Last I heard, the charges against Seif were vague and baseless, concocted to justify the overthrow of his father's government and prevent a family-based transitional alternative to the popular and pragmatic Seif. These, as I recall, were mostly connected with issuing orders for the killing of innocent protesters that it seems never happened, or perhaps it was the air strikes on them that also didn't happen, the mass rape orders, the hiring of African mercenaries, or some specific massacre of mostly black civilians he was implicated in...

Maybe somewhere he wronged Al Qaeda or ISIS and they want him tried at the Hague and this really would help chill them out. It's possible? What does everyone else think? Will handing over Saif Al-Gaddafi still the tensions racking Libya and especially its east today? Or is the solution to be found elsewhere? How about installing Seif as president?

Odessa Trade Union Massacre: Stairwell Victims - Murdered and Burned Later

By Adam Larson (aka Caustic Logic)
November 1, 2014
last edits November 12

<-- Odessa Trade Union Massacre {Masterlist}

Warning: This is an exceptionally gruesome crime, and this semi-forensic examination of it is extremely graphic and not for the young, faint of heart, etc. By the standards of this site, for those who know, it's about average - but in Europe this time, and standards seem to differ (?). As usual, respect to the dead is paid in attention to detail, with an eye to truth and to achieving some semblance of justice, whenever that become possible. 

Note: I had to get this up slightly ahead of the 6 month mark - it's not complete, missing some links and images I'll add soon ... and as we're still considering the details (these victims mainly at this spot), I'm expecting revisions to this post in time. But this is the latest acceptable time and it's close enough to get this advanced rough draft up. These details need to be addressed, then double-checked, verified or refuted. In my opinion, proof of state-sponsored terrorism doesn't get much more obvious than this.

---

After the fires were put out at the Hall of Trade Unions in Odessa on the night of May 2, at least 12 bodies were visible in or right next to the central stairwell at different levels. The only of these to be widely seen are the five charred bodies, all seemingly of men, clustered together on the landing below the half-barricaded 4th floor. These were first seen in a Dumskaya video with a privileged view at what the screen-titles say is 22:00 (rounded off, possibly rounded way down, who knows, but presumably around 10:00 PM). This shows all the stairwell victims, mostly in extreme dark and revealing little detail. At that time, the five on the landing were arranged as shown in the composite view, lightened (from still images found around, apparently from this video):

For reference, let's number these poor souls left-to-right:
#1) hanging out the window, as if he died (from the gas? From the glass in his belly?) in the act of climbing out, and had his pants burned away and shoes melted
#2) head at the railing's bend, arms out to the sides, far more charred than most
#3) along the wall, face-up, almost recognizable
#4) head towards stairs, arms frozen up
#5) same but with head almost under the pile of junk "barricade"

These five and some below can be seen mid-day on the 3rd in a Euromaidan PR video of "Russian Terrorists Burnt Alive" and in the ubiquitous photos taken by a young lady calling herself Alena. These show the victims finally tagged by the police, and also arranged differently. #1 is pulled inside and laid in the corner, abd #2 rolled over halfway. #3 is about the same, and #4 and 5, of most interest here, have been dragged a little ways down the stairs. 

With the scene established, let's consider four points, A-D:

A) Gunshot Wound?

The May 3 Euromaidan video offers one brief glimpse of an important clue regarding victim #4. Seen at 0:54 - the clearest frame frozen here - is a dark circle on the right chest, indicated. The way the angled light falls across it, this seems to be concave, some kind of circular puncture wound - likely a bullet hole. About fingertip size, it seems, this might be about one centimeter/a half-inch across, or about the size of a 9 mm round?

A bit further over is something dark and convex, looking more like his nipple than this other dark spot.

This is not a conclusive finding but as the next part clarifies, something killed this guy hours before he and the others were burned in a fire on this landing. A bullet or other puncture just to the left of his right nipple could explain that.

B) Rigor Mortis Before Burning
An extremely important point that can be discerned just from the available images is that victims #4 and 5 at least were dragged here by the arms after they were dead and rigor mortis had set in.  They didn't die here as claimed.

By my limited reading, it seems rigor mortis onset is usually 2-6 hours after death, or a bit faster in warm conditions - like summer, or a severe fire. Considering the intensity of heat it might be reasonable to put it at 2 hours here. A human body usually reaches maximum stiffness after about 12 hours and relaxes slowly thereafter. By this, anyone killed at 8 PM would start stiffening around 10 PM, be most rigid around 6-8 AM, and be little different from that by mid-day.

In charred bodies, muscles contract, locking the last position and never relaxing. Both at night and the next day, the raised arms here look the same - like handles, on bodies dead for a few hours or so before that pose was charred into them permanently.

Landing victim #2 stands out from the others in being more charred, almost skeletal in spots. He (or she) was quite likely burned once in another spot before being placed with these other bodies, apparently carried face-down by two people, one holding each wrist to create this unusual "crucified" posture.

Two others not in the above image show the same signs, all within one floor below these victims, in or right by the blazing stairwell:

- third floor landing - never seen clearly, we see stiff, raised left arm, fingers burnt to the bone, with the right arm unclear and also the head unclear - it almost seems there's not enough room there for a full head, and there's no sign - no nose or anything but an off-center light object. If missing part of his head, that's a clearer sign of prior murder than #4's possible bullet-hole. But this sin't enough to be sure. He was either dragged into this position by a person who back up to the wall and pulled the body right up to it as well, or only dragged part-way and later pushed back further.

- third floor - fingers burned to the bone, face inexplicably messed up, maybe boiled outward (?), no trace of pants (except at waistline?) often considered female rape victim, aside from hairless burnt legs, I'm not so sure - all others in the stairwell seem to be male. * This body seems to have the same handles as the others, as seen on the 3rd, but the bent legs don't suggest dragging. The body's earlier position - flipped over face-down - can hardly be the one he/she was burned in. Top sides burn, faces and hands. That we see the ub-charred back of the victim's jacket on top means they've been flipped over, and the next-day view is more accurate - so the arms do look like the same raised handles, and the legs were perhaps re-positioned after dragging.

* note - gender segregation of the dead to this degree often means someone singled out the men to kill and the women for some other fate - but possibly only the men went here hoping to get out and get help for the women inside, or whatever...

I'm not an expert on the subject, but have the insight of studying the Khamis Brigade Shad Massacre, where we could see many cases of extreme burning. It does not cause arms to stick up in the air. What it does, that study showed, is contract muscles, with the most relevant feature how the stronger back muscles contract with more force than the front, and the body curls backwards. Ribs, arms, and legs, splay out in reaction to that, and the head rolls back and to one side. None of the bodies here is burned enough to clearly show that, and there's no fire-related cause for these zombie-arms.

This effect is not really seen elsewhere among the TU Hall victims. Some have arms are up like they're surrendering horizontally, or were dragged lengthwise, but the extended arms lay on the floor with the rest of the person, not locked up in the air.

Consider a victim seen of the 5th floor landing, in the Dumskaya video from 10 PM (at 1:02 in the video) and in a better side-view in this Dumskaya photo. Lightly burned on the back of the head and hands only, his cause of death is unclear. His hands are elevated slightly, suggesting he too was dragged into place. His arms would have been higher at first, but the movers saw them adjusting back down and figured after a few minutes it wouldn't look so odd. But the stiffness was still increasing, and his hands only dropped this low before filming. After full stiffness and some relaxation, his hands are flat on the floor by mid-day on the 3rd as seen in another photo (that has strange issues to cover elsewhere). That's the natural progression, with not enough burning to lock the position in place.

C) Burned After Positioning
The arm position of these five victims being locked in place by fire suggests both that they had rigor mortis, and that they'd been positioned like this prior to their main torching, and not after it. But there are other supporting clues, including these:

We can see these stairwell victims have specifically burned faces and hands, like many other victims do. Perhaps in an expansion of that, or in a separate round of burning, #4 and 5 seem to have also had fire set to the upper-middle surfaces of their bodies. We can see on their thighs and bellies where fatty tissues beneath ignited, bubbled briefly and then went out. That suggests a fire dwindling from an intense start, probably with one coat of flammable liquid applied and lit up.

All things considered, the body movers must have managed this part as well. Note how victim #5 has only the left pant leg burned away. That suggests the fuel was sort of drizzled on/between both of them by someone standing on the landing, further from #5. More fuel would be splashed on the their inner halves (#4 right, #5 left), and less on the far side of #5. Also, they splashed more in the middle of each body and less at the ends; at the open expanses, clothing burns away. leaving the crotches and seams, with lower pant legs and footwear intact, and at least #4 retaining the upper part of his long-sleeved shirt.

Victim #2, as noted above, seems significantly more charred than the others, possibly burned once even before being positioned here, doused anew, and included in this staged blaze. 

D) Burned Too Late or Killed Too Early?
When this all happened is a central question. At least one victim, and perhaps only the one, was being burned in that spot shortly before fire crews arrived, so app. 8:00-8:07 PM (estimate - "8PM" hereafter). This is seen on video: Road E-95 News at 20:40, for example, shows him from the outside, hanging headfirst out the window as flames churn behind him. (See also my analysis video that shows a possible start to this second blaze, then some footage of it really going) It might seem natural to conclude all the victims are there behind him and being burned as well, in the same fire of disputed cause that pro-government sources blame for their deaths.

But if so, to develop rigor mortis in time, they must have died around 6:00 PM, and I challenge anyone to tell me where that happened and by whom. Were the federalists already killing their own before the mob arrived? (that was about 7:10 PM, by the way) Who was dragging them around and burning away their faces at 8:05, well after after Maidan and Right Sector took over and stormed into the building? No, the dying started between 7:30 and 7:50, at the change in management following the mob's arrival.

Unless ... it's true that some of the mob's worst allies - the apparent false-flag provocateurs from downtown, Parubiy-sniper types dressed as pro-Russians who slipped through the special police-Maidan cordon at Afina Center - came here earlier than the rest. Some clues do suggest some tricked their way in, mingling with local security, up to the roof and down to the basement and urging everyone else to hide inside between them. Once in, they might start killing an early few people quietly in the shadows ... shortly after 6 PM, the timeline suggests.

"Okay, you two guys that were here before, go with these two new guys and set up a surveillance room at the north corner." A wink and a nod at the right time, and there's two dead ...

Placement and burning for the three discussed - #2, #4, #5 - should be around 9:30-10 PM at the earliest, if they died around 7:30-8. The fire response ran from arrival at 8:09PM to, as the Rada investigation's report says, all fires being declared extinguished at 8:50. So there was either a later fire that defies the official timeline, or the victims were killed earlier than the known fact can account for - something mysterious was going on there well before the main attack force arrived.

Let's consider this Odessa Channel 1 video - 9:55:50 PM by the title, meaning (broadcast time? Live? It's got edits... whose time zone? Etc.) It's full dark - possibly 8:50 (fire containment time), but likely even later. At 0:12 the camera looks slightly down from a high fire ladder or crane into those windows, with victim #1 still hanging out on the right. Firefighters with their white helmets are inside, working the landing, with others descending from there. A strangely bright and energetic fire continues high up and to the left - corresponding perhaps to the pile of debris "barricade" on the right (as seen from inside). This may be some kind of intense gas lantern - they don't seem at all concerned with it. Maybe we shouldn't be.

 

Note how they're bending down as if doing special work on something on the floor, like the other four bodies would be. Suggested is a no-later-than planting and apparently burning time for those - whatever that is (unsettled). We can see firefighters tried putting out the one victim as a first order of business around 8:10 PM, while actually putting out the 2nd floor blaze. They had a proper ladder soon (about 8:20?), and presumably put the 4th floor blaze down then, and claim they got all fires by 8:50.

But the clues might say there was one last fire they didn't admit and had to put out anew an hour later, in about the spot they started at almost two hours earlier. Confirmation or refutation of this fire time is an important next step.

Two possible scenarios, depending how all the details really line up:
* Only the one victim was in place at 8 PM: #1 in the window. Then the landing was doused with flammable liquids and lit up. The fire crew arrived right after this and put it out. Later, the movers had more bodies, dragged or carried the other four in, doused and torched it again shortly before the Channel 1 footage was filmed.

* These were people killed an hour or more earlier, and possibly no second fire after 8PM is needed to explain it.

Possible thinking for a late fire: the visible victim #1 already set the picture for the whole landing fire at 8PM. As long as the later blaze didn't get noticed, the clues would seem to suggest killings around 6 PM - long before they got there, publicly. "The "Russian Terrorists" were shooting each other before they started the building on fire by accident, and also before we ever got here, maybe just to make us look bad!" Sounds silly except they may have had a hundred extra bodies and some worries about that becoming known ... just in case, they could say there were some pre-killings by their own side ... and in context, that probably includes the extra hundred, already trucked away before we got there. When you're dealing with Putin, all bets are off and anything goes, right?

Other Evidence for Bodies Moved After Murder
While it can't be directly connected to any of the stairwell victims under study, there is at least one spot where we can see signs supporting people being murdered in one place and then dragged elsewhere - possibly to this spot. This is seen in the "Flagneck Tour Video," as it turns out filmed by local Right Sector supporter Alex Rychkoff. In there somewhere, in an upper floor office (seems maybe 4th floor?) we see smashed-in doors, a dead man and a dead woman (smoke inhalation, "Flagneck" says) and next to a far wall, no body but instead a heavy smear of blood. Not brains shot out, Alex is told - the blood just coagulates. Fire and smoke killed them, smashing down doors, and leaving blood coagulating beneath the one person who ... got up an walked away fine? No, that does not add up well.

The person who bled and presumably died here was clearly removed. The copious blood might be from  an obvious fatal injury not suitable to explain with "smoke inhalation" like the ones left in place. Problem is, it doesn't explain the blood either. Here, maybe 4th floor, a non-burned room with a murdered body taken out. In the stairwell just below the 4th floor and a bit further down, bodies that died or murdered somewhere else were dragged in and burned. That might add up perfectly.

Conclusion:
Point B is central. The other two have their ambiguities. All-in-all, we have clear evidence that people were murdered and dragged around after rigor mortis set in and deliberately burned, for whatever reason.

The main mystery that raises questions for investigators of the massacre is the killing-and-fire timeline. To be that stiff before burning, victims either needed to be dead by around 6 PM, if they were burned around 8:00 (at least one was), or killed at the time of the known incursion (roughly 7:30 and after) and burned in a later fire around 9:30-10 PM, that challenges the official story.

At the moment, I'm leaning to earlier murders by allies of the attackers who had managed to get inside the building well before the main events. I suspect these quietly picked off a handful of victims (I presume they make silencers even for 9mm pistols), anyone they ran across over the afternoon as they laid the trap for the rest. Details of who was/should be in there still remain unclear to me - anyone happen to have more info on how busy vs. empty it should have been?

Fail Caesar: Exposing the Anti-Syria Photo Propaganda

Fail Caesar: Exposing the Anti-Syria Photo Propaganda {Masterlist}
November 8, 2014
last edits March 21, 2019

This story of "Caesar" - the code-named defector with a supposed 55,000 photos worth of proof the "Assad regime" was genociding its Sunni political prisoners, 11,000+ at least 6,627 of them - warrants a series of posts (number of parts unsure but low) and so, as they come up:

• Fail Caesar Part 1: Protecting his Identity - From Whom? (if his story of employment by the Syrian government is true, the code-name and other precautions couldn't possibly hide his identity from them. So ... why all the secrecy then?) 
• Fail Caesar Part 2: Re-Considering the Victims (if we're willing to question what he says about the dead men documented during the Syrian conflict, what else might explain the evidence?)
• That may be enough, unless there's some new development...
• There was. Fail Caesar, part 3: A New Offensive at the Ides of March, started post added a bit late, March 19. The nearly 7,000 detainees face shots are released, challenging one core problem I'd raised, and leading to a slew of alleged identifications.
• Part 4: The Other Half of the Photos - And then in December, 2015, the Human Rights Watch report and its revelation that half of Cesar's photos did not show tortured detainees, but rather, more or less, showed victims and effects of rebel violence.  The half that did show alleged regime detainees was the app. 6,700 shown in March.
• Photos Timeline - scrapped for now, see ACLOS page with a usable start (collaborative, if anyone collaborates!)  Helps largely verify the numbers and number system alleged.
• Part 5: Questioning the Number System - building off the timeline and other on-going analysis, so far this proves nothing one way or the other, but it's well-worth understanding, and some serious contradictions and minor mysteries are raised.  
• Part 6: Evidence the Victims were NOT Prisoners of the Government The start of what I've been building up to here; it seems these are unidentified bodies, not coded prisoners. They include rebel combat deaths, some pro-government fighters, some civilian massacre victims, and mainly a whole bunch of civilians and fighters held captive, starved, tortured, seemingly mass-exterminated and dumped - by the foreign-backed terrorists plaguing the Damascus area. It does not seem likely the victims were held by the government those terrorists seek to undermine with hostage-taking, genocide programs, and false-flag allegation. 
• Part 6, sub-posts A-G (see part 6). 
• See also tortured detainee denials (or actually government admissions of torture - by the terrorists)   
• Part 7: Inventing More Coded Prisoners? Connecting to parts 5 and 6 but deserving its own slot - Identifying a peculiar pattern of inserted entries  that essentially proves some invention of the telltale "prisoner ID#" from a different number that means no such thing.  133 cases at least were nabbed in this analysis, with the method, pattern and meaning explored in a super-detailed explanation.
• Part 8:  Upside-Down Terrorist Crimes in Geneva?: On Mohammed Alloush, poitical leader of Jaish al-Islam - possibly the killers of the Caesar photo victims - using the photos in his new job as Saudi-Western-backed chief negotiator in Geneva, in light of the evidence of genocide contained in the photos.   
• Part 9: Prior Documentation of Torture: So far one telling example of opposition activists intercepting regime abuses (of the kind as, from the area as, and at the same time as the abuse of the Caesar photo victims) - just moments after they happened. 
•  Part 10: On the Silence From Damascus: Asking for more information.  
• Part 11: Tortured Detainee Denials: They blame hart attack, illness... terrorists... torture...
• Part 12: Timeline of Terror: updated photos timeline + details considered

See also: Assad Files-Caesar Photo Line-Ups: Genuine or Phony? (cross-over with "Assad Files" and, I think, a different number system the government really used that almost lines up, briefly, with the fake prisoner numbers for MI branch 227 - detailed consideration suggests the systems were a few days apart in repeating these two numbers - all other cases will be farther from lining up, and only these two near-matches have been highlighted to 'prove' these numbers are official, rather than made up by terrorists)

Part 13: Do the "Caesar Photos" Show Chemical Mass Extermination?
(there's a chillingly strong case that they do - forthcoming)

See Douma's Mask of Death, part 2: The “Caesar Photos” Connection 

#CaesarPhotos Identified Victim Profiles

• Rihab Allawi (The one female out of 6,700 shown victims) 
• Husam Suraym  (a strange alleged FSA member/civilian)
• Mohammad Khaled al-Tout
• Majid Abu Draa (origins of the pattern in part 7) 
• Dr. Mohammed Zakariya Naddaf
• Mahmoud Al-Zoubi (ties into the case of Hamza Al-Khatib)
• SAFMCD Named Victims (a few odd cases where they have the names already)
• Nabil Sharbaji (alleged author of the famous and dubious '82 names' list and of some notes written after his death...)
  
• Abdulmuemen Alhaj Hamdo (the one that sparked a Spanish National Court case)
• Ahmad Musalmani (forthcoming)
• Ayham Ghazoul (f/c)
• The Other HRW cases (f/c)
• ... (forthcoming?)

---
"Caesar" is widely advertised as totally winning, a hero for truth and justice, risking his life. But his life might be a work of fiction. No one can really know yet who the victims are and who killed them. But over the last ten months, I and teammates at A Closer Look On Syria have compiled some good analysis and questions on the page Torture Photos from "Caesar" and its talk page. This research is the starting basis for the material in the posts linked above. From the main page there,

the overview:
---

Carter-Ruck report, figure 5

On January 21, 2014, the media grew abuzz with startling news - first broken the day before - of "industrial scale" torture, abuse, and murder of at least 11,000 Syrian prisoners by their government. Such claims were nothing new, but this time they were supported by actual photographs and some kind of study by professional investigators of such crimes. The unusually strong claims and noted parallels with Nazi death camps made waves, among other places, at the Geneva 2 peace conference which began in Montreaux the following day.

The claims were lodged originally by an alleged defector - code-named "Ceasar" - who says he was employed by the Syrian government as a morgue photographer. Over the first 29 months of the Syrian conflict, he says he collected copies of 55,000 digital images he says show about 11,000 dead victims, all of them executed prisoners of the Syrian government. Sometime in August, 2013, "Caesar" says he stopped taking new pictures, faked his own death, and escaped with his trove, as he says, "in order to stop the systematic torture." With funding from the Qatari royal family, the defector's narrative was bolstered with the hire of British law firm and a team of three war crimes prosecutors. The latter drafted a report - stamped "CONFIDENTIAL" but ultimately released on January 20th via Western Media in France, Turkey, the US, and UK. (see below) - that analyzed the photos, and passed on the back-story "Caesar" provided. The primary media reports added little to no skepticism, and political leaders have of course added none of their own as they reflexively push their well-known anti-Assad agendas.

It should be considered there are two parts to this evidence package; the actual photographs, and the alleged photographer's explanation of what they show. The 30+ images published, at least, do show systematic abuse of captive men, including signs of torture, starvation, and sometimes execution. While we cannot know how representative the few publicized photos truly are, it seems criminal abuses are being carried out in Syria, a problem that merits alarm and attention. "Caesar's" story may be true, but for all we know, many of these bodies passing through this morgue could have different true stories. For example, some of them (like the apparent Christian man in image #25 - see list here) could be of civilians hostages taken by rebel forces, executed and then dumped, and simply being documented by the government. It's only by trusting Caesar that one can be sure that's not even part of the picture.

The reasons to question or even doubt the defector's word are many, starting with the baseless claim that any code-name would protect him or his family from the Syrian government, if his employment story is true. All it really does is keep his identity secret from those he's appealing to, and suggests he may not be at all who he claims. [3] But these reasons have been ignored in a push by the powerful to indict and harm the Syrian government again, this time over distressingly ambiguous morgue photos.

"Caesar" has arguably been given more credibility than "Curveball" and "Nayirah" combined. Nonetheless, this project has proven less effective than some may have expected; throughout 2014 it continued with diminishing efforts to spur direct, perhaps military action against the Syrian government. The first release on January 20, as mentioned, complicated the peace talks starting on the 22nd. As the conflict ground on, some photos were presented to the UN Security Council in April in another fruitless effort to secure firmer action against the Syrian government. Some images plus the defector appeared before the US House of Representatives foreign policy council in late July. Then a select few images were displayed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in October. These plus frequent media exclusives and interviews with countless uncritical echoes, as a New York Times article lamented on October 31, had so far "spurred outrage, but not action." [4]

---

The cartoon below shows the one victim of the few shown so far that is apparently a Syrian Christian, a segment of the populace that the Sunni extremist anti-government rebels often kidnap and execute, for their religion and/or for supporting the government and resisting the rebellion. Other targeted classes, by the way, are Alawi, Shia, Kurds, and the majority of Syria's Sunnis who also support the government. They don't usually sport tattoos like this, so it's hard to tell whether or not you're looking at one, once he's been murdered in a photo that rebels wound up with in the end (if not from the start).

Note, Feb. 11, 2016: I can expand on the photographed Cristian victim now. The card always said (in other views) Branch 227 victim #2615 - that's the number on this SAFMCD entry with consistent face shot from folder 7-7-2013. Eye gouging isn't clear (partly blurred) but his eyes do seem at least damaged (chemically),  like many, many sets of eyes in here. Like the rest of those, he also has some red-purple irritation of the skin, mild cyanosis (blue blue lips), yellow crust in the eyes, and orange fluid (blood-mucous mix) running out of his nose and mouth, apparently bubbled or foamy at the mouth (blurred). That's besides being stabbed, starved, etc.  For what it's worth (not clear), his entry number is just 5 lower than eyes-gone Douma resident Mohammad Khaled al-Tout (he's 227-2620), and little ways into a long and horrible stretch of hundreds of mostly-starved bodies where half seem to have actually had their eyes totally removed (runs at least 2480 to 2824 - link on that maybe in time).

Other Assorted visual aids:
Famous victim with fan belt "highly consistent with  the ligature mark seen in a different individual," and put around his nech for unclear reasons. New details: logged Jan. 2013, victim 1043 from branch 227 (they say,) moderately starved, fit fighting age male, apparently exposed to a caustic chemical of the most common type.

How about victim 485 from branch 215, also photographed in 1-2013. This is a roughly teen-aged guy, perhaps adult but likely under 18 - he's been badly starved, perhaps tortured, and finally gassed, creating yellow mucous in the eyes, and burning the hell out of his neck, and causing him to spit up blood - most likely while being hanged upside-down, like many victims apparently were. The guy above might've looked like this before cleanup.

Seriously folks, words aside .... is this more like a Mukhabarat (Syrian military intelligence) extermination program, or one run by, say, al-Qaeda? 

Continuing with that thought, see this, and FC part 6.

...

Odessa Trade Union Massacre, 2 May, 2014 {Masterlist}

October 28, 2014
last edits (major) Nov. 2

I don't intend many posts on this subject here, but at least two to start, plus this overview page. This appalling case and its details are being explored in much detail at the research wiki A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS) on these pages and sub-pages (Talk pages are more active and full - front pages largely waiting to be filled in)

* Main page - Main talk page - All sub-pages and sub-(talk)pages (list in time)

Posts here: 

* Stairwell Victims - Murdered and Burned Later
* The Red Tape Behind Odessa Police Purge

By way of an intro, I cite Stephen F. Cohen's description from The Nation, June 30, 2014

On May 2 ... a horrific event occurred in the southern city of Odessa, awakening memories of Nazi German extermination squads in Ukraine and other Soviet republics during World War II. An organized pro-Kiev mob chased protesters into a building, set it on fire and tried to block the exits. Some forty people, perhaps more, perished in the flames or were murdered as they fled the inferno. A still unknown number of other victims were seriously injured. ... Kiev alleged that the victims had themselves accidentally started the fire, but eyewitnesses, television footage and social media videos told the true story, as they have about subsequent atrocities.

Not everyone realizes, after they surrounded the building with hate and lit up some windowsills with molotov cocktails, the "rally for a United Ukraine" then entered the building. Hundreds of people armed with clubs are seen lining up at two forced-open doors on the building's un-policed south end. From there, they were reported all over the building, roving the halls in aggressive packs. Numerous witnesses describe parts of the MO employed - the invaders smashed in locked doors and barricades to take over occupied rooms, even spraying some debilitating gas at the defenders. Once in control they would either shoot or beat to death all the men (to be quieter about it?) and take the women, in some cases apparently to rape (see witnesses). Victims' bodies show signs of gunshots and other violent death, and of being re-arranged and deliberately burned after death (detailed post here - based on ACLOS analysis).

The scene, oriented to regular north.

The two corners where hundreds of armed Euromaidan militants visibly entered the building are best called south (first, prior to 7:45) and southeast (after 7:46, both calculated from given video start times)

(note: back stairwell fires might have been a bit earlier than indicated - the first might be the blaze mentioned in a 7:45 call about fire inside on floor 2, "above the entrance")

What About the First Half where "They Started It?" 
The above makes it sound like everything happened at Kulikovo with no preceding events. And in contrast, according to Kiev and sympathetic sources, this massacre stuff doesn't matter compared to the all-important preceding events. To them, the fire and bulk of the death was all accidents and "unknowns" and stuff, and was "probably inevitable," after people dressed as anti-Maidan militants first opened fire. This escalation of the clashes with no adequate reason, killed a few people on both sides and injured many more on both sides and among the police. These "pro-Russian Fascists" and they alone "orchestrated" anything that could be called a "massacre." They and the police who failed to stop the provocation (or the resulting massacre!) bear full responsibility, the massacre absolvers claim. The Maidan-Right Sector hate machine here was just a blameless slave of the "probably inevitable" - that still didn't kill anybody.

There are extremely valid issues worth considering in the early clashes set-up, the provocateurs, and the police inaction. And we do cover this at the ACLOS Clashes page, and in the red armbands post here. But we're all sick of hearing about this one lesser half of events as if it could possibly explain away the kind of unhinged brutality that marks this act of state-sponsored political terrorism.

State and Allied Response:
Kiev's new NSDC (security) chief Andriy Parubiy was in Odessa three days before the pogrom, meeting with local deputized criminal Mykola Volkov, delivering body armor for anti-terrorism use. Volkov and many others were seen wearing this body armor as they assaulted the Trade Union hall (Mykola seen firing a pistol, replica apparently). Parubiy's deputy in Odessa, Sergei Gutsalyuk, was seen monitorin the attack and working with police as they did nothing.

The police at first only stood in formation some distance from the building, with no effort to slow the mob's invasion and ignition of the building. Later they somewhat shielded the survivors as they arrested almost every one of them - and no one from the attacking mob - for their protection and also on terrorism and related charges (or, one could say, on charges of surviving). It took the fire department nearly an hour to respond from the first flames, with operators apparently ordered to ignore emergency calls on the basis there was and could be no fire emergency (calls analysis). Someone turned off the building's water prior to the fire's outbreak. The fire response units finally sent between 8:09 and 8:16 PM were inadequate, the rescue process painfully slow (see Fire Response). It's reported that authorities refused to accept missing person reports- leaving an unknown number of (probably dead) people simply written off as mysteries that never came home that day.

The current Ukrainian government has launched six official investigations, five being insider whitewashes, one a compromised parliamentary investigation that reached a few relevant conclusions, the most important of which were edited out after everyone signed (at least one committee member withdrew her signature after seeing the edits). Kiev blames only "pro-Russian terrorists" and allies in the police and general society for sparking events, the massacre part of which was just an accident (unless, as they sometimes hint, the terrorists gassed and burned themselves on purpose!)

Somehow, this basic view carries over to at least one public "independent" investigation ("Group 2 May") and apparently another (Information Center). Governments that support Kiev, and the Western mass media, have virtually ignored the story past their initial reports of a murky fire that apparently never seemed worth figuring out.

Our Response:
It's been six bleak months for truth and justice in Odessa. Time for action. Many others are already working on this case. (For example, the May 2 Committee) I plan to start networking with them for best effect. Below I will gather some useful links and pointers for spreading the word, the best word, and the best way. Also, ideas and tips are more than welcome in the comments section.

Things we support:
* Anti-fascists massacred in Odessa to be remembered, honored

On the six-month anniversary, activists around the world will remember this crime and honor the victims with memorials, rallies, meetings and photo exhibits. 

In New York, the International Action Center has called for a protest at the U.S. military recruiting station in Times Square on Sunday, Nov. 2, at 1 p.m., to remember the murdered anti-fascists. Participants will tell Washington, Kiev and the corporate media to stop the cover-up of those responsible for the massacre.

* Events in Lugansk People's Republic, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, elsewhere plus some links to info resources, etc. at the new Facebook page Odessa Massacre: Six Months Later

Odessa Trade Union Massacre: The Red Tape Behind Odessa Police Purge

October 27
small edits Oc. 29

<-- Odessa Trade Union Massacre, 2 May, 2014 {Masterlist}

There can be little doubt the first deadly violence of May 2 came from militants wearing red armbands, pointing and firing guns from ground level and rooftops. The red bands (plus St. George ribbons and other signs) are supposed to mean Anti-Maidan, "pro-Russian" activists; their unprovoked bullets are blamed for the shooting deaths of six people, sparking the following escalation by the other side. Pro-Kiev analyses consider these "terrorists" the only people to blame for the day's events, while anti-Maidan analysis often calls these obvious infiltrators, probably Right Sector, sent in to spark the planned massacre. The latter is probably more true, but at least some in that outfit seem legitimate, caught up in the backlash and arrested in the dozens just before the assault on the House of Trade Unions.

This likely mixing of real and fake leaves researches with a murky situation that can't be easily called one way or the other. Whoever they all were, note that including non-fatal hits, the Odessa shooters apparently aimed for both pro-Maidan and anti-Maidan activists and police - see here - just like the mystery snipers in Kiev that brought the new government to power in February. Sooper-seekrit Russian agents bent on mindless chaos are generally blamed by Andriy Parubiy, who was in charge of security in both cases ...

The obvious police inaction that allowed this deadly escalation has been widely criticized, often taken as a sign of complicity with the red-armband militants. Both sides do this; one says they were pro-Russian cops, the other says we see right-wing cops helping with the provocation. By our study so far, it seems the police were neutered by some kind of unofficial order to support no one and let actions take their corse. This furniture-like state was best taken advantage of by the provocateurs, like "Botsman" (Vitaly Chudeko) who fired a fake AK-47 replica at people from behind the police lines (see here).

Less of these people complain that the same inaction at Kulikovo Field allowed them to get manifold revenge without interference. Consider this lightened still from 2:50 in this Alex Rychkoff video, showing the police line at the building's north end around 8 PM. One of the many things there they did nothing to stop was neo-Nazis spraying their vile symbols across their pointless wall of shields.

That's passivity. Another and more concrete issue with the police that day was the apparent show of solidarity some cops at the clash scenes made with the anti-Maidan side. Several were seen wearing the same red-tape armbands as the provocateur militants, but lower on their arms (always below the elbow, while the militants have it always above). Here are three still images used around, and the source articles for background reading:

Top:  Odessait.ua Middle: bolshoyvopros.ru Bottom: TSN.ua in a report citing then-governor Nemirovsky claiming police were often bribed to take the anti-Kiev side, supported the with this image. Also used at "Planet Putin" which explained "It has been common practice since early Maidan for titushki provocateurs to wear a common armband with Berkut riot police they were working with, so presumably the police would be able to identify them and not accidentally shoot or beat them."

In context, the visual effect is clear: red-banded militants always cling to and talk to the police, especially those unusually displaying the same color. Not just pro-Russian militants but corrupt, pro-Russian cops were also to blame for angry people having to massacre people later on the day's unfortunate events. Such images, alongside the real inaction and various other clues and rumors, fed into a massive purge of the police force of those thought to be of this pro-Russian sort.

Police chief Petr Lutsyuk and his top deputy Dmitri Fuchedji (one of those shot and wounded in the clashes) were both fired and put on watch on May 4, likely along with quite a few others. Fuchedji, fearing for his life, fled to Transdnistria, where he blames Parubiy's private army for the assault (Kiev calls the fugitive their "main suspect" and want Russia to hand him over). Lutsyuk remains around, perhaps in hopes he'll side with Kiev and blame Fuchedji and the pro-Russians (so far, it seems he's maintained public silence)

In quieter batches, the new chief Katernichuk has overseen the dismissal of what the Interior Ministry estimated in mid-October as 412 members of the police force (in Odessa region, not just the city) over links to terrorist groups and the like (see here and Policing the Police?). What proportion is that, I wonder? MoI brags that over half of those fired were ranking officers, meaning they really shook up the system responsible for what happened May 2.

The guys in the photos used as proof for the problem should surely be among those fired. But just like the real snipers so necessary to the massacre, who probably escaped everything unharmed as others paid the price, the case against these particular cops eventually fell apart. For their September report, the Ukrainian Rada's temporary committee investigation (whitewash, mainly) asked about the issue. As summed up by RBC.ua, Sept. 8 auto translated with repairs:

"When asked why some police guards had wound red tape around their hands (forearms), similar to what is used to identify activists of Odessa squads "the police reported that when they stand in steps ( тоять у сцепці ), for hand protection they wear shields. These shields often slip, causing injury to hands, so for fixation, the plates were wrapped with tape, the color that was in there ( який був у наявност )" - said in the committee's report.

So it had a strictly tactical purpose, simply using the color - maybe the only color - they had on hand that day. It was an unusual bright red and had this unfortunate effect. They might have skipped it and relied on the professional gear designed with such things in mind. But that wasn't good enough, and they were really worried about slipping shields. The troublesome color did not actually wind up hidden beneath shields very much, and was seen just waving in the open on many arms. Red flag! Problem with the police!

The low placement, about where you'd put shield-holding tape, does in fact fit with this story, but it's still hard to believe. Rather, using the forearm probably means they put on this costume with that excuse in mind, that is with conscious intent to cause a problem for others and then wriggle out of it themselves. It worked and they got in no trouble, I'm guessing, because they are not the pro-Russian cops they appeared. In fact, they might swing far to the right, helping as they did to spark a purge of those anti-Fascist cops like Fuchedji, Lutsyuk, and 410 others.

An investigation of these police with red tape is in order, but will not happen by official channels. After such massive losses recently, they can't afford to fire every cop just who happens to be a Pravi Sector sympathizer and participant in the false-flag massacre and Fascist purge.

Houla, May 25: the Turning Point in Syria

May 27/28, 2012
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic

Note, Dec. 2014: This post is just early thoughts. The good material on Houla came later and can be found by following this link:
Houla Massacre (Syria) {Masterlist}

(otherwise last updated July 4, 2012 with minor edits Oct. 26, 2014)
July 4 "Houla" Massacre investigation progress:
A Discussion thread: Houla Massacre, Syria: What If?
An appeal and two starter articles at the CIWCL site
the appeal and the forum create the research wiki (still accepting members willing to dig in a bit and help)
That enables a featrued article at SyriaNews.cc, July 3.

The last was actually finished and published today, the 4th, but didn't want to make a point. But here I do. Happy Independence Day, USA. Long ago you stood up as a nation and said "we have a right to exist as a nation and reject foreign management." Some nations don't get to be so lucky, even today.   From the last link (prior to a possible edit of a few typos, which I'll just fix here, sory):

Do please realize now that if little Ali Al-Sayed is a fake, coached witness as he now seems, that suggests the opposite of what he says is more likely true. That means the people the West is increasingly arming and supporting are the ones who actually left a reported 49 children and 59 adults dead in Houla. It would mean the weapons people want more of sent were responsible for attacking the protecting army stations, and getting these monsters in close enough to slash throats, hammer heads, rape, mutilate, burn, and otherwise make of men, women, and children extreme examples sent out on Youtube. 

Besides propaganda fuel against the regime, this horror show might also have been designed to send a different signal within Syria, where people actually know more of what’s going on and have thought about it more deeply. Some evidence suggests the killings terrorized loyalist, Alawite, and other non-Sunni or non-rebel families into fleeing for their lives and limbs. That’s in lieu of joining or surrendering to the side that, increasingly, has a good chance of winning and hunting them down anyway.

After Houla and at least one copycat massacre, among an ever-increasing string of barbaric terrorist acts, it’s more urgent than ever that the world help Syria overcome the menace. Monsters are inscribing their bleak world vision on the flesh of the nation’s families, and the government’s defenses grow weaker by the week. But sadly, the brain-damaged “world community” is further than ever from helping at all, and is in fact pushing to escalate the horror until it manages to overcome all defenses and satiate itself at its own leisure.

And doubtless we’ll have plenty of witnesses along the way to deliver a version that upsets us less than the truth would.

Original article, initial thoughts, updated to June 2, below:
---
I don't keep up on the news, and Syria, while related, is off-topic here. But I just caught a CNN report on the protests against a supposed Syrian government atrocity, late on Friday (May 25), in the small town of Houla (or rather the Houla area, with the worst in Taldou). The readers hardly should need a re-cap of this amazing slaughter  - as in with blades - of over 100 people, half of them young children. Some number of Syrian protesters believe the Rebel claims of Assad forces authorship, and are protesting and, they say, being killed nowfor that. There's condemnation from self-righteous Western outsiders of the Syrian forces, its demonized regime, even the UN monitors who've been monitoring the gov't forces and still failed to prevent this massacre against civilians (meaning BY non-civilians, gov't forces)...

Who runs the morgue where all the bodies are laid out? Where was the rebel video of this to shock the world freely filmed? Is it it an area under rebel/terrorist gang control? Let's see.
Houla, Google Maps - about ten miles northwest of Homs.
Map, April 10 - it's between Homs and Rastan, partially controlled and totally controlled and hotly contested by the false-flagging Bosnian-Libyan style terrorists there. Suspicions bolstered.

The big question CNN and the corporate media salivating after Iran's oil will not want to ask: Who stands to benefit from a sudden slaughter-provoked panic in this rebel-held area? The government struggling to regain control of a country it has to live in, or the outsiders (who feel free to mangle and walk away as they've done in Libya) and the insurgents they support? Who would hack to death fifty children? Who stands to benefit from the responsibility to Panic (R2P) doctrine, when Syria's (and Libya's) enemies tend to control the process?

Islamists hack people up. Islamist provocateurs might do it in public, en masse, on children, if they want to upset people in a direction they find useful for destroying a nation. Libyans are involved here, since the NTC/NATO rebels took over Libya's plentiful ports, their exports include people much like the ones who almost surely caused the slaughter at Abu Salim hospital, perhaps 200 or more people shot in their hospital beds, throats slit, heads chopped off, government loyalists, local black people who were trying to flee, a few women and children included... this time they're in someone else's contry, perhaps more free to mangle and walk away like NATO does.

What this incident really needs now is an investigation. Heck, the hospital thing still hasn't gotten one, and this won't either. What it's supposed to get is panic, moral certainty, and strong action to overthrow the government and turn the whole country over to the armed militias of whoever, just like happened in Libya. It'll probably get something along those lines.

No bombing this time? Fine. It won't be so quick and decisive. Rather than 7-8 months bombing and then the years-long purges and skirmishes, it'll be a grinding three-year war, costing at least half a million lives. Followed by the purges and insurgency and bleed-over. Sound good? No. "The Arab Spring" is long over. Welcome to next year, with Syria still resisting. Time to acknowledge a few things.

Advice to Syrians 
The Libyan loyalists (a large and ignored percentage of the population, if not an ignored majority) were up against even more pressure by far, per capita, than the you guys are now. But if they had stood together stronger at Tripoli, or earlier, they could have stopped – or greatly slowed - even that onslaught. Some of them fought valiantly but too little too late, and they were slaughtered. Too many others caved in to fatalism, defected, fled, or surrendered. Now those who supported or served the former government are demonized and hunted down, imprisoned for rebel crimes against their colleagues, blamed on them, and often tortured to death well before any of the promised "fair trials."

 The world cannot sit by and watch – or help - this happen again. Nonetheless, it might. All citizens who support the government of Syria, or at least oppose the terrorists trying to destroy it, make an ever more united front. Bigger protests, armed militias – armed civilians fighting the armed civilians-boy wouldn’t that confuse the corporate media? Brainwashed civilians they’d say, so not civilians-government machines. Well, fuck them. Arrest the rats, confiscate their weapons. Get decisive. Isolate their strongholds, smash their border crossings and supply lines. Support and protect the locals in their effort to end the disorder and get on with a reasoned approach to settling the real grievances they have against the government.

 If the forces of "Free Syria" and chaos are allowed to win, as some very powerful people are trying to make happen, eventually, it could be over for you. Government soldiers, police, ministers and workers and prominent civilian supporters and volunteer defenders will pay. They’ll be the ones hacked up in ditches, languishing in prisons rape rooms, toenails pulled out, boiled alive, who knows? If you are to be killed for daring to oppose them, do it head-on, in battle, now or quite soon. 

 This is war, or at least a huge police operation that’s threatening to become one, so no doubt people will continue to die during the clean-up. The Syrian loyalists must remain sane and humane, killing as few as possible, detaining or abusing as few as possible, all the while documenting everything, showing the world the truth (even if it ignores you by and large). They need to know they’re losing, and start giving up and scattering.

 Don’t ignore the propagandists – answer them calmly and efficiently. But don’t waste much breath or time trying to argue with them.

 Advice to The World:

 Russia: they could use more some help on all fronts. Responsibility to Protect a state from anarchy and years of bloodshed and revenge and torture? Check.

 Iran: fuck the propagandists. Send technical support for border control. Keep this all between the Syrians to sort out or, if that fails, make sure both sides are bolstered by armed outsiders, the legitimate government with more. You could be a force for peace, preventing the grinding war from taking root. Not that you'll get the recognition you deserve from CNN and the like...

UN: Can you do your job this time, unlike with Libya? The inspectors do seem to be making some sense. Who do they feel has been trying to blow up the monitors in rebel-held territory? 

F-UK-USA/Israel/Rebel Libya/Saudis/Others: Fuck the fuck off. I wish I could flat out say “you will lose here,” but that’s not clear yet. I hope it does soon get that way. Above named parties - make it so.

Update May 29: From one of the great comments below, Houla one month ago, on the regime's last child-killing foray against civilians there. They selected a Syrian military officer and his entire family. For refusing to kill civilians, we presume? Here's a young boy of a loyalist family caught in the crossfire. Not in the sense of being hit by accident. No, someone decided to put bullets in each and every one of these brains they hated. And they keep coming back for more, especially now the child-killing is working in their favor.

June 2: A lot of typos and such above, little time. New info is coming out. Some links
Details on the Syrian investigation (called a "Blatant Lie" by Susan "Viagra" Rice)
A list of the victims, Google translated Lots of stupid shit about punishing the regime, broad acceptance the regime did the shelling, because they have such weapons for sure and the terrorists only might have them.
BBC has satellite images from the day after the massacre showing caterpillar tracks in the "suspected artillery position," suggesting tank-tread artillery was driven there the day before.
"All the images were taken on the morning of Saturday 26 May, within hours of the massacre ending."

So... why are the same tracks there on Google Maps' earlier, greener imagery from February 22 or earlier (not there in Aug 20 2010, there by Feb. 22, per Google Earth, and thanks Petri for looking that up). This might be a tree farm, a small one, with lots of little dirt roads for accessing the trees, to plant, water, and eventually harvest them. I don't see any reason to think it's a place where artillery's been driving at random amongst the trees for at least three months now.

Why do we suppose the BBC called them "telltale tracks," giving credence to private "military analyst" Forbes McKenzie? McKenzie "believes [these] are the caterpillar tracks left by a mobile artillery battery that fired on the civilian houses" and told the BBC "This would be standard Soviet bloc tactics, firing from woods and then withdrawing." Is this guy an idiot or a liar trying to "justify" war? I don't think he's an idiot.

Dusty and Dated Names, so What?

October 26, 2014

We at this blog (basically Petri and I and, in context Felix) flaked out on covering Libya as soon as there was no ongoing external-power air war, almost as if that was the end of the "Libyan civil war." The blog title was never very acurate. For the record, I picked it in early April, 2011, in response to claims of pro-war Libyan suck-ups that virtually all of Libya's people rejected "the Gaddafi regime" and this was no civil war the West was stepping into - just a small prod to finalize the will of all the people. So I just countered that by calling it a civil war, always I thought with the majority supporting the government and opposing the suck-ups. Nothing since has changed my mind on that ... so it was the Libyan imposed chaos, the Libyan Naqba ... whatever the site's called, it's what's there that matters, and it was always pretty awesome on balance.

It took the end of the air war, the fall of Sirte and murder of Gaddafi, and some more time totaling about ten months of this blog's existence, before Petri and I formalized a Citizen's Investigation Into War Crimes in Libya (CIWCL - website) in February 2012. We refined some of our more detailed work on murky massacres in Tripoli into two serious reports later in the year (June and August). By then, we had shifted from covering these Libyan incidents and looking at current ones in Syria. Under the same CIWCL name and at the research wiki-cum-discussion forum A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS), we have done much to correct the record on Syria and also expanded a bit into Iraq and even more into distant Ukraine, as that land too was flung far off balance fell apart, with all kinds of crazy false-flag shit for us to untangle.

We are the masters of the incorrect and dated title, arbitrarily left on what remains pretty amazing work. We are the CIWC Libya studying events in Syria, A Closer Look On Syria investigating war crimes in Ukraine, etc. So there's no good reason why a blog called "Libyan Civil War" should stay so quiet - especially one that still gets decent views (thanks to my salf-appointed ghost writer "h". Hi, h!)

Note: Petri already broke this barrier with his post Russia, Libya, Syria & MH17 This is me endorsing that spirit and encouraging more of the same, from him, me, or whoever (new members still welcome)

Forthcoming fairly soon, hopefully (still only so many hours in a day):
- Houla Massacre re-cap - important achievement
- Maybe other Syria highlights (Ghouta, Aqrab, Al-Bayda-Baniyas, the "Caesar" photos, etc.)
- Maybe some Ukraine issues, from February's snipers to mass graves in the east.
- Possibly some new Libya-related posts, at least all-but-blank subject-centered comment accumulators like my last couple...

Recently, I've been working mainly on Ukraine, and strictly the Odessa Trade Union Massacre (off-the-books Anti-Terror Operation?) of May 2, recently with more input from other ACLOS members. Resup has provided some great translations that unlock spoken info to advance the case (see main page, main talk page, and the sub-(talk)pages (with sub-(main)pages mostly underdeveloped so far... On November 2, it will be six months since this unsolved act of state-sponsored terrorism happened. I'll have a post or two in time to help mark the semi-anniversary.

Leonore on the Situation in Libya

August 5, 2014

(Thanks to an e-mail tip - from Spanish to Italian to English, the last step anyway in Google Translate)

These caricatures are published daily in social networks Libyan clearly show that the Libyans know the reality of what's going on. No doubt from 'West is complicated view because of' intoxication daily all means tergiversano the reality.

Since yesterday or maybe two days most of Libya do not have electricity and were cut social networks, calling cards are scarce and scarce food.

Same as what he did with his NATO bombs, the so-called Muslim extremists are destroying the medical, food shops and infrastructure of the Libyans. Exactly the same "work" https://www.facebook.com/NessBookcom/photos/pcb.805072429514591/805072369514597/?type=1

It seems that this morning clashes in Tripoli have been reduced a lot and runs the rumor that the mercenaries are attacking the capital city of Tripoli in Libya because they do not want it to be the capital city and want to convert Misrata to the capital of Libya.

Misrata, along with Benghazi was the place where this invasion (was designed?). Already long before he started in February 2011 in Misrata had installed business of war, became sottterránei communicating channels between the harbor and some buildings and settled the Zionists together with companies from the war.

There invaders in Libya leading the Libyans to torture, executions do, imprison, mercenaries come from there ... the whole world and armed with drugs to invade, attack, steal, rape. From there come the aggressors professionals who invaded Beni Walid with toxic gas, cluster bombs and all the artifacts for illegal killings.

Misrata has been transformed into the black box of terror to Libya and now want to convert in the capital ... obviously this intention has nothing to do with the desideio Libyans.

For a few days it became a Libyan returning to his home in terrible conditions. Quest 'man was gone for six months, and the family had given him up for dead. He said he was 5 months in prison under the ground in a house and they threw the food through a hole. And 'there remained closed for 5 months. One day I pulled out of the hole and took him to Misrata where he was tortured to see if they knew "something". Seeing that he did not know anything about anything they released him.

If we analyze this fact tells us many things that seem impossible. In the first place there is the law in Libya because NATO is responsible to delete it and to ensure the 'impunity to all criminals and psychopaths who introduced in Libya.

The fact of releasing it after all these barbaric shows us that you feel safe all these psychopathic killers assured that no law makes him nothing. In Libya, there are thousands of thousands of people who have gone and go through these experiences, similar or worse, and then they must continue to live, the suffering of the families.

    Leonor Massanet Arbona