Interrogation rooms with wooden boards used to immobilize detainees, are among the evidence of torture Human Rights Watch says it has uncovered in Syria.

Proof of torture -- that's what Human Rights Watch says they've uncovered in Syria. Researcher Lama Fakih says they've found everything from written accounts of abuse to actual torture devices, in the rebel held city of Raqqa.

Human Rights Watch researcher, Lama Fakih: "We were able to see, for example, documentary evidence of the types of cases that the intelligence forces were following. We were able to see the solitary confinement cells where the detainees were held. We were also able to see interrogation rooms and torture rooms."

Most of the material was found inside former security and military intelligence facilities.

"In one case," Fakih continues, "in the State Security branch, we were able to see a basat el-reeh torture device. This device is a wooden board that is in the shape of a cross that a detainee is bound to. It folds in half and enables the guards and interrogators to bind to detainee in a very uncomfortable position so they can beat him while he is defenceless."

Interviews with locals, according to Human Rights Watch, also confirmed reports of torture and arbitrary detainment. The New York based activist group is urging local oppositon leaders to safeguard documents and other material that might be used as evidence that war crimes were committed.

Much more on the findings in Syria from Human Rights Watch.

Amid reports that the Syrian military is secretly stockpiling chemical weapons, U.N. human rights investigators allegedly have testimony indicating Syrian rebels have used sarin gas. Interviews with victims and doctors have provided “strong, concrete suspicions” that rebels used the deadly nerve agent, according to a lead investigator, though the U.N. does not have “incontrovertible proof.” There’s no evidence yet that the Syrian military used sarin. The latest Geneva-based investigation is separate from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s currently stalled inquiry into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Reuters:

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

Israeli warplanes have targeted Syria twice in the last three days, and now Israel is deploying two batteries of its Iron Dome rocket defense system to the north of the country. The second airstrike early Sunday, hit a military facility just north of the capital, a Western intelligence expert confirmed. Israel declined to comment. “The sky was red all night,” said one man who lives less than a mile from the facility. “We didn’t sleep a single second. The explosions started after midnight and continued throughout the night.” The facility reportedly held Iranian-supplied missiles, which Israel contends were headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel attacked the same site three months ago. President Obama, meanwhile, defended Israel on Sunday.

by Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica, April 19, 2013

As an eighth-grader in a Cambridge public school, suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was quiet, friendly, spoke good English and seemed at home in his adopted country.

While hundreds of police officers pursued the 19-year-old during a nationally-televised rampage across Boston Friday, a former classmate recounted memories of the refugee who, according to counterterror officials, became a U.S. citizen on an ironic date: Sept. 11, 2012.

The story of the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, is still unfolding at high speed. Many aspects of the case, including the brothers' motivations, are not yet clear.

But a portrait began to emerge Friday based on ProPublica interviews with counterterror officials, the public statements of relatives and associates, and reports in the media.

Counterterror officials believe the brothers were Islamic extremists. And the information available so far suggests that they appeared to integrate well into U.S. society, yet slid into a spiral of Islamic radicalization with bloody results. The profile has similarities to the home-grown terrorists behind attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, according to counterterror officials.

"He was always a nice kid," said Cam Blauchner, who attended middle school with Dzhokhar, in a telephone interview with ProPublica. "He was shy, but not in a creepy way. He was a sweet guy. We played soccer together. I knew he was from Chechnya, but he never talked about it. He never mentioned his religious affiliation. I didn't know he was Muslim."

At some point, however, Dzhokhar and his brother plunged into a subculture that is grimly familiar to counterterror agencies in Europe and, to a lesser but worrisome extent, the United States, officials said.

There are signs that the brothers showed interest in the conflict in Syria, which has drawn al Qaida fighters and other militants from across the Muslim world and Europe, according to a U.S. counterterror official. Like others interviewed for this story, the official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing case.

The brothers had viewed videos about the plight of Syrian Muslims, the official said. Syria is the latest hotspot on the world map of jihad. Holy warriors a decade ago were inspired by videos about brutal combat between jihadis and Russian troops in the brothers' family homeland: the predominantly Muslim region of Chechnya, a breeding ground for al Qaida fighters in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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[This video contains graphic images of war casualties. Viewer discretion is advised.]

I just received this video from Andrew Golis of Frontline, and he adds "This is what it looks like when a government drops bombs on its own people."

When Frontline filmmaker Olly Lambert sat to interview Jamal Maarouf, a Syrian rebel commander, he did not anticipate that bombs from government jets would begin to fall just 300 meters away. Though the first blast knocked him to the ground, Lambert kept his camera rolling. He spent the next hour documenting the impacts of the Oct. 28, 2012 bombing of al-Bara, a village in Idlib province an hour south of Aleppo. The result is a rare, immersive portrait of the immediate aftermath of Syrian government air strikes on a civilian population.

Frontline has condensed the footage into this 36-minute digital feature, vividly narrated by Lambert. It captures the chaos on the ground as villagers try to rescue family and friends trapped under the rubble, the bombing’s effect on ordinary civilians whose lives literally have just been blown apart, the terrible fear when the government jets return for a second bombing run, and the ensuing calls for revenge that illustrate the country’s descent into a no man’s land of hatred, suspicion and terror.

“It’s only when you see things like this that you realize the real impact of civilian casualties in a civil war,” Lambert says about the scenes he witnessed. “When I first arrived in Syria, people would often say to me, ‘Here your life can end in a moment. Any minute now you could be dead.’ And at first I didn’t believe them, but certainly after an experience like this, it’s hard not to feel that they’ve got a point.”

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Eric Harroun, a U.S. Army veteran from Arizona, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly fighting alongside an Al Qaeda front in Syria, and then boasting about it online. Harroun, who served in the U.S. army from 2000 to 2003, told the FBI in Turkey that he hates al Qaeda and was only trying to help topple the Assad regime in Syria when he fought alongside rebels. He was arrested upon his return to the U.S. The criminal complaint against him claims Harroun conspired to use a weapon of mass destruction." Harroun remains in custody pending a preliminary hearing in April.

ABC News:

Throughout his ordeal, Harroun appears to have posted pictures of himself online in military fatigues with his fellow fighters and weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade. In one post, he reportedly claimed to have downed a helicopter. He also appeared in online videos threatening Syria’s President Bashad al-Assad, court documents said.

The court documents say Harroun admitted online and to the FBI agents that he had fought with the al-Nusra Front, but claimed that he hates al Qaeda and was only trying to help topple the Assad regime. The U.S. government has repeatedly called on Assad to step down and recent news reports allege the U.S. is helping the rebels acquire weapons from friendly regional governments.

In an interview with Fox News earlier this month, Harroun said he was welcomed by al-Nusra.

“Getting into al-Nusra is not rocket science,” he said, according to Fox News. “It just takes balls and brains.”

I think there is a lot more that is not being said about this case, otherwise, I suspect that Mr. Harroun's "balls and brains" would've had a close encounter with a U.S. drone. Not saying I agree with or condone drone strikes -- particularly on American citizens -- but this sounds like precisely the type of activity that the current policy for drone strikes was written for.

A suicide bombing tore through a mosque in the Syrian capital Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad along with at least 41 other people.

Syrian extremists have killed the wrong Sunni cleric. Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, a top Sunni preacher and supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, was one of 42 people killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in Damascus on Friday. In response, Assad has stated that his forces will “wipe out” and “clean our country” of the Muslim extremists he believes are responsible for the attack, the first to target a mosque since the country’s civil war began two years ago. Meanwhile, the United Nations plans to investigate whether either the Syrian government or its rebel opposition has used chemical weapons against one another, as they both have claimed.

Via:

It was one of the most stunning assassinations of the two-year civil war and marked a new low in the conflict: while suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists fighting with the rebels have become common, the latest attack was the first time a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a mosque. The grandson of the 84-year-old al-Buti was among those killed in the attack.

In the statement carried by Syria's state SUNA news agency, Assad said al-Buti represented true Islam in facing "the forces of darkness and extremist" ideology.

"Your blood and your grandson's, as well as that of all the nation's martyrs will not go in vain because we will continue to follow your thinking to wipe out their darkness and clear our country of them," said Assad.

Syria's crisis started in March 2011 as peaceful protests against Assad's authoritarian rule. The revolt turned into a civil war as some opposition supporters took up arms the fight a harsh government crackdown on dissent. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed since.

It is not yet clear when al-Buti's funeral would take place, although the Syrian government declared Saturday as a day of mourning.

In what would be a deadly new low in the Syrian conflict, both sides are accusing each other of launching a chemical attack near the city of Aleppo. A Reuters photographer visited a hospital where people were suffering from breathing problems. “I saw mostly women and children,” he said. “They said that people were suffocating in the streets and the air smelt strongly of chlorine.” The Syrian government claims the rebels launched a chemical-laden rocket, killing at least 25 people and wounding 86, while the rebels say the regime fired the weapon. President Obama previously warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the use of chemical weapons would be a “red line.”

Via:

Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired "a rocket containing poison gases" at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city's southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.

"The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death," the minister said.

But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad's forces for the alleged chemical strike.

"We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents," he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday was already calling for the U.S. to put American troops on the ground inside Syria to secure the weapons of mass destruction.

Via:

Graham told The Cable in an interview Tuesday that whether or not the attack can be confirmed as the first use of chemical weapons in the 24-month Syrian civil war, the United States must devise and implement a plan to secure Syrian chemical weapons sites and deploy U.S. troops to do it if necessary.

"My biggest fear beyond an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is the chemical weapons in Syria falling in the hands of extremists and Americans need to lead on this issue. We need to come up with a plan to secure these weapons sites, either in conjunction with our partners if nothing else by ourselves," Graham said.

Asked if he would support sending U.S. troops inside Syria for the mission, Graham said yes.

"Absolutely, you've got to get on the ground. There is no substitute for securing these weapons," he said. "I don't care what it takes. We need partners in the region. But I'm here to say, if the choice is to send in troops to secure the weapons sites versus allowing chemical weapons to get in the hands of some of the most violent people in the world, I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem."

Der Spiegel:

The men from the collection point for the nameless dead always come during the morning. They descend from a major intersection in the Bustan al-Qasr district to the small Quweiq River and bring the bodies that have washed up overnight to a courtyard, where they are wrapped in white sheets and photographed before being left there for a day. This is the place where people looking for missing relatives come to find them.

For weeks now, the river has brought new bodies almost every night. The corpses arrive without any identification and the hands are generally tied together with plastic strings. The men have all been shot.

The week before last, the river carried three bodies on some days, and seven on others. Last Monday there were five, but on Tuesday there were almost 80. There had been heavy rain in the night, the river level had risen, and now corpses were lining the muddy river bank

As it turns out, many of the dead were students who lived in other towns, and had come to take exams at the University of Aleppo. The campus is in an area still controlled by Assad's troops, and unfortunately, had to pass through their control posts.

"It appears that Assad's people arrested the men, brought them to jail and shot them before throwing them into the river."

Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists appears to show the moment one in a series of deadly explosions struck the campus of Aleppo University on Tuesday as students were taking exams. The clip begins with a view of smoke rising from behind a university building as students mill about. Moments later, following a very loud explosion close to the camera, students run for cover and a much larger plume can be seen above the building.

An estimated 52 people were killed in the blasts, with dozens more injured. Once Syria’s commerical epicenter, the city of Aleppo has essentially been the site of almost constant violence since July, with insurgents and government forces locked in a stalemate over control of the city. The university, which is in a government-controlled part of the city, had been conducting classes as fighting went on.

Antigovernment activists said university buildings had been hit by missiles fired by Syrian military forces. But SANA, Syria’s state-run news agency, indicated that the missiles had been fired by the insurgents.

“The most painful scene was a chopped hand with a pen and notebook right next to it,” an education student who identified himself as Abu Tayem said over Skype. “I saw blood, flesh littered all around.”

American journalist James Foley is missing in Syria after being kidnapped six weeks ago, his family announced Wednesday. According to witnesses, the 39-year-old freelancer was taken by unidentified gunmen on Thanksgiving Day in Idlib, the same turbulent northwest Syrian province where NBC foreign chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel was kidnapped last month. Engel and his team were freed on December 18th. Foley's condition is unknown.

"We want Jim to come safely home, or at least we need to speak with him to know he's OK," Foley's father, John Foley, said in a press release. The family has set up a website, freejamesfoley.org, and Facebook page to publicize his situation. This isn't the first time Foley, who has contributed to the AFP, news website GlobalPost and U.S. TV stations, has encountered trouble while reporting abroad. In 2011 he spent 44 days in captivity after being captured by pro-Qaddafi fighters in Libya.

Via:

Foley had set off toward the border in a car about an hour before his capture. A witness, a Syrian, later recounted over the phone to a journalist in Turkey that an unmarked car intercepted Foley. The witness said men holding kalashnikovs shot into the air and forced Jim out of the car.

The witness said he noticed nothing that would indicate whether the aggressors were rebel fighters, individuals looking for a ransom, members of a pro-government militia, or a religious-based group with other motivations.

Hopefully, Foley's experience in such situations will be useful to him, and he will be released and reunited in good health with his family very soon.