Syria Rebels Form Death Squads, Carry out Beheadings, Summary Execution of Prisoners

Syria Rebels Form Death Squad, Behead Army Soldiers
Posted on March 28, 2012

Syrian rebels have formed their own laws, courts and death squads in Baba Amr neighborhood in the restive city of Homs and beheaded the captured army soldiers, a report has revealed.

The report, published by Spiegel Online on Monday, discloses violent measures by the anti-government armed groups, laying bare the other side of the unrest in the Middle Eastern country.

Hussein, one of the rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, is quoted in the report as saying that he himself decapitated four army soldiers who had been detained by gunmen.

Hussein said that he beheaded the first victim, a Shia soldier who had confessed to using violent tactics, in mid-October, 2011, in a cemetery.

Hussein did not care whether the soldier’s confessions were real or he had made them under duress. He had simply grabbed a knife and beheaded the soldier who had knelt down in front of him.

The soldier had been captured out of sheer “bad luck”, said Hussein.

While he is a member of a rebel death squad killing government forces in the name of the “Syrian revolution,” there are others who are responsible for torturing captured soldiers.

Many rebels can torture, but not everyone can kill, admits Hussein, who is now receiving treatment in a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tripoli where he and his fellow companions are openly talking about torturing and killing Syrian army soldiers.

“But I do not know why killing is not difficult for me,” he added.

Hussein’s life story demonstrates the course of actions rebels have taken during more than a year in the Arab state.

The report further divulges that Syrian rebels in Homs have since August, 2011 begun regular execution of Syrian soldiers.

“As of last summer, we have executed 150 men, which constitutes only 20 percent of our prisoners,” claimed another hospitalized rebel identified as Abu Rami.

“Moreover, when we realize that a Sunni is spying against us we then hold a brief trial for him,” Abu Rami said, adding that they have executed between 200 and 250 people in such cases.

Revealing the shocking incidents in which rebels even kill Sunnis, he went on to say that “Syria is not a place for the squeamish. “

The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing the protesters. …more