THURSDAY’S DEVELOPMENTS
Fighting kills 6: Syria's government continued its air campaign targeting rebel held areas in the northern province of Aleppo Thursday, killing at least six people, opposition activists said. The assault has killed more than 100 people over the past few days, according to opposition groups and a statement by Doctors Without Borders.
U.S. ship prepares: The U.S. ship that will serve as the lynchpin for the destruction of Syria's most toxic chemical weapons is preparing to leave Virginia in about two weeks for what will be an unprecedented, complex mission. Officials familiar with the plan say that the MV Cape Ray is expected to run through sea trials in the coming days and could leave for Italy as early as Jan. 3.
Russia objects: Russia objected to a proposed U.N. Security Council statement expressing outrage at the airstrikes launched by the Syrian government. The statement, proposed by the United States, required approval from all 15 council members. Diplomats said Russia, the most important ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, wanted all references to the regime stripped from the statement so the U.S. decided to drop it.
A panel of U.N. investigators said Thursday it believes the Syrian government is committing a crime against humanity by making people systematically vanish, and that rebels have also recently begun making their opponents disappear.
In a report based on interviews with survivors and family members of victims, the panel said the war tactic being used by President Bashar Assad’s government amounts to a crime against humanity because it is part of a policy of spreading terror and mental anguish among those left wondering about their loved ones.
Rebel groups such as the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, that control large parts of northern Syria also have begun seizing people and running secret prisons, the panel said.
But until recently, it said, most of the opposition has been committing war crimes, a lesser category of violations, by abducting human rights advocates, journalists, activists, humanitarian workers, religious leaders and perceived supporters of Assad’s government.
Those are war crimes because they are not systematic, the victims tend to be taken as hostages for ransom or prisoner exchanges, and their existence isn’t concealed, the panel said.
Syria’s main opposition group in exile, the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, said any opposition groups illegally seizing and holding innocent civilians are violating of the basic goals of the Syrian uprising.
It said in a statement that the coalition does not consider ISIL a part of the opposition: “Its actions serve the regime’s interests.”
In the case of the Syrian government, the panel chaired by Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said it found “a consistent country-wide pattern” of Syrian security, armed forces and pro-government militia seizing people in mass arrests or house searches and at checkpoints and hospitals, then making them disappear — and denying that they even exist.
Most of the victims have been young men, and panel member Karen Koning AbuZayd said that based on “consistent reports” of how and where people are disappearing, the panel assumes “most of them” have been tortured in prison.
“It appears to be a policy because it’s so widespread. It’s around the country,” she said. “We know there are thousands, but we have no idea how many are in detention.”
The U.N. panel pressed Syria’s government to provide information and called on both sides to stop the practice, and said it could “only hint at the scope of the crisis … and the state of fear in which ordinary citizens live.”
In Damascus, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mikdad blasted the United Nations, telling Syrian state TV that the world body’s role in the crisis is “disgraceful.”
Among the cases cited by the panel were a 60-year-old woman put in Homs prison for asking about her missing son, and a peaceful protester’s brother taken in a house raid by political security agents.
In other cases, an air force defector described orders not to provide information about the whereabouts of detainees or to speak to their relatives, and a political security defector said officers received orders to round up every male between 16 and 40 years old taking part in a demonstration.
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