Syria’s once-teeming prison cells being emptied by mass murder

[TomSea]

Syria’s once-teeming prison cells being emptied by mass murder
Assad’s government is doubling down on the killing of political prisoners as the civil war heads toward its conclusion.
Story by Louisa Loveluck and Zakaria Zakaria
Dec. 23, 2018

BEIRUT — As Syria’s government consolidates control after years of civil war, President Bashar al-
Assad’s army is doubling down on executions of political prisoners, with military judges accelerating the pace they issue death sentences, according to survivors of the country’s most notorious prison.

In interviews, more than two dozen Syrians recently released from the Sednaya military prison in Damascus described a government campaign to clear the decks of political detainees. The former inmates said prisoners are being transferred from jails across Syria to join death-row detainees in Sednaya’s basement and then be executed in pre-dawn hangings.

Yet despite these transfers, the population of Sednaya’s once-packed cells — which at their peak held an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 inmates — has dwindled largely because of the unyielding executions, and at least one section of the prison is almost entirely empty, the former detainees said.

Read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/?utm_term=.a50f4dd7bfa5

[Right_in_Virginia]

In interviews, more than two dozen Syrians recently released from the Sednaya military prison in Damascus

Do you read what you post @TomSea ?

[TomSea]

Do you read what you post @TomSea ?

@Right_in_Virginia

I sure do, I follow the excerpt rules.... if it weren't for these Syrians recently released by ransom in some of the cases, we might not know what is going on. We'd probably have a pretty good idea nonetheless.

[Right_in_Virginia]

@Right_in_Virginia

I sure do, I follow the excerpt rules.... if it weren't for these Syrians recently released by ransom in some of the cases, we might not know what is going on. We'd probably have a pretty good idea nonetheless.

Fair enough.

But you keep posting these articles as though we need to do something about it @TomSea .  What would you like us to do about this?  Please keep your answer just to the inmates w/o spewing about Mattis and the Kurds. 

Thanks

[TomSea]

Fair enough.

But you keep posting these articles as though we need to do something about it @TomSea .  What would you like us to do about this?  Please keep your answer just to the inmates w/o spewing about Mattis and the Kurds. 

Thanks

No, I'm posting articles to post about it.. just like your FLOTUS posts. What should you care about it for? What are you going to do about it?  We should be kept up to date. You are telling us to not be informed, you may not be that doesn't mean the rest of us want to be. I mean, after all, you wrote "what were we doing there" in the first place, you spewed it. 

This is current news, what's more, one could argue we should be updated because if Trump does not reverse course,  it might really hurt his presidency, maybe the opposite could be said to be true as well but I'd think the possibility of that is much less.

Excuse me, I voted for Donald Trump for being different than Bush and Obama, not to repeat the same mistakes.

I think it is a pertinent article as well, since you've seen to take marching orders from the Putin-bots at TOS with such statements as "Oh, if Assad is overthrown, something worse will come in" and that may have some truth in it, we deserve to be informed.

[GtHawk]

No, I'm posting articles to post about it.. just like your FLOTUS posts. What should you care about it for? What are you going to do about it?  We should be kept up to date. You are telling us to not be informed, you may not be that doesn't mean the rest of us want to be. I mean, after all, you wrote "what were we doing there" in the first place, you spewed it. 

This is current news, what's more, one could argue we should be updated because if Trump does not reverse course,  it might really hurt his presidency, maybe the opposite could be said to be true as well but I'd think the possibility of that is much less.

Excuse me, I voted for Donald Trump for being different than Bush and Obama, not to repeat the same mistakes.

I think it is a pertinent article as well, since you've seen to take marching orders from the Putin-bots at TOS with such statements as "Oh, if Assad is overthrown, something worse will come in" and that may have some truth in it, we deserve to be informed.

@TomSea I agree with you on this, though I admit not always but what a boring world it would be if we did. If all someone wants to see and hear is what they agree with, why ever move away from a mirror. I love this site because there are posts from a broad spectrum of views and I choose what to read or ignore, and sometimes I learn something different from my view that I hadn't considered before. So keep it up, we don't need a one note samba.

[Sanguine]

@TomSea I appreciate your posting these articles.  I usually don't comment on them, because I don't know a whole lot about these corners of the world, and that is the same reason I read your articles.

[Right_in_Virginia]

No, I'm posting articles to post about it.. just like your FLOTUS posts. What should you care about it for? What are you going to do about it?  We should be kept up to date. You are telling us to not be informed, you may not be that doesn't mean the rest of us want to be. I mean, after all, you wrote "what were we doing there" in the first place, you spewed it. 

This is current news, what's more, one could argue we should be updated because if Trump does not reverse course,  it might really hurt his presidency, maybe the opposite could be said to be true as well but I'd think the possibility of that is much less.

Excuse me, I voted for Donald Trump for being different than Bush and Obama, not to repeat the same mistakes.

I think it is a pertinent article as well, since you've seen to take marching orders from the Putin-bots at TOS with such statements as "Oh, if Assad is overthrown, something worse will come in" and that may have some truth in it, we deserve to be informed.

Are you seriously comparing a thread on fashion to a thread on killing inmates @TomSea   I doubt that.

So, I repeat my question.  You are posting this, along with dozens, to make a point.  I'm simply not clear what your point regarding these inmates are.  Do you expect outrage?  Do you expect U.S. citizens to demand we storm the castle?

What would you like us to do about this situation that you consider serious enough to bring to our attention?

[TomSea]

Trump may well be outfoxing us all once again, a bluff.

Do we remember, when he seemed to offer amnesty and the Democrats didn't want it?

Do we remember how he told NATO they needed to pay up for more, though, in some ways, it was seen as Trump wanting to leave NATO, it really wasn't that way.

Perhaps this is more of the same.

------------

I will not post for the time being, anything that might be seen as not helpful to Trump... but that shouldn't include Assad, a lot of stuff important is happening here,

We don't want to undo a lot of good done that Trump has done. We may be seeing a decision that is seen so widely as being ludicrous, that perhaps it is a ruse.

Moratorium just for me on anything that appears to put the Prez in a bad light but that is all, Moratorium until Dec. 26th. However, if some other big news stories hit, we should be updated, there was someone who fired 3 shots from a Kalishnokov into a restaurant in Brussels today, no one was hurt but say, if some terrorist attack or other happens, I will seek to post it.

In the meantime, who the press now call "Trump's ally" Lindsay Graham's twitter:

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC

And Rubio:

https://twitter.com/MarcoRubio

Go there for info.

[TomSea]

In fact, we already have the example of Obama withdrawing US troops out of Iraq and very clearly, a disaster of the size which we can only imagine unfolded and that was after the surge under Bush, Iraq became very much pacified. We need to be careful, that we don't make ridiculous blunders as a nation that could be easily avoided.

I heard some soliders over there don't believe we are leaving, maybe it's just a dog and pony show.

[Sanguine]

@TomSea, how is this bit of news "critical of Trump"? 

[TomSea]

@TomSea, how is this bit of news "critical of Trump"?

Actually it is not but I think that is where the sensitivity comes from.

[TomSea]

 Some Lindsay Graham clips, okay, I see bad dictators in the world, it does not necessarily mean we need regime change everywhere but he knows a lot more than me. Assad may have helped foment dissent against us in Iraq.  So, most every other thing Graham says I agree with.

Graham from 2015:

Sorry...

Graham in the last month with Senator Menendez.

Sorry...

[LegalAmerican]

TOMSEA...how about, you worry about our AMERICA and its citizens?  We cannot take care of the world.  Are YOU a globalist?
In fact the World wants America to stop 'HELPING'.  Not our job to keep meddling into other countries lives, beliefs.

Move to Syria. Be a missionary there.  Help them all you can.   We need our own country, saved now. You are obsessed with Syria.

[Cyber Liberty]

This interesting article is evidence of why we need to just stay out of shithole countries.  We have no friends there to fight for.  They all suck.

[LegalAmerican]

This interesting article is evidence of why we need to just stay out of shithole countries.  We have no friends there to fight for.  They all suck.

Agreed.  It is COMMON SENSE.   

[truth_seeker]

I feel sorry for the Syrians. Perhaps the wealthy Muslim majority nations in the region should help them, followed by the UN, and only as a last resort should the US shed any further blood or treasure, there.

Same goes for Afghanistan.

If anybody from any of these shitholes harms Americans, turn their homelands into radioactive glass for 1000 years.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others, went at the entire mission, using half-measures.




 

[LegalAmerican]

I feel sorry for the Syrians. Perhaps the wealthy Muslim majority nations in the region should help them, followed by the UN, and only as a last resort should the US shed any further blood or treasure, there.

Same goes for Afghanistan.

If anybody from any of these shitholes harms Americans, turn their homelands into radioactive glass for 1000 years.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others, went at the entire mission, using half-measures.

 

[Smokin Joe]

This interesting article is evidence of why we need to just stay out of shithole countries.  We have no friends there to fight for.  They all suck.

Quashing insurrection gets ugly. The worse the insurrection, the uglier it gets. Ask the Bonus Army of 1932.

That was relatively mild compared to the machinations of tribal/sectional/sectarian politics in the Middle East. Most who rule there do so because they are the meanest Mofo in the valley. It is how they keep the peace internally.

Yep, from the start we had no business there, it is only in dealing wit ISIS there is any justification at all, not in taking sides in the internal politics of a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us.

[DCPatriot]

Do you read what you post @TomSea ?

That jumped off the page for me, too.

After being in horrific Syrian prisons where inmates are executed "in the basement", ...like in the movies, they know every detail, etc..

IMO, nothing differentiates it from an 'anonymous' source.

Like it or not, Assad is Syria's gorilla glue.  Without him, she becomes 'Libya-East'.

The cognitive dissonance around here is fascinating.

[TomSea]

Firing or forcing out Mattis, however it happened, one of the most respected modern military leaders, this is going to be seen as backstabbing not only a valued ally who did just take another village from ISIS; but backstabbing the military as well. Trump may still reverse this but if he doesn't, sorry, this may add up to being a one term president, I guess one can also hope that perhaps Turkey will be a good partner, that hardly is a sure thing. If anything, Trump's support of the military was thought of as being a big selling point. Oh, no, let's please Erdogan instead.

And what the Saudis are giving I have seen, is $100 million to rebuild Raqqa and North East Syria.  Is that so much in the big picture?

https://www.newsweek.com/us-saudi-arabia-race-against-russia-iran-rebuild-syria-too-little-late-1078641

... Saudi Arabia devoted $100 million to reconstruction efforts in areas under the Syrian Democratic Forces' control. The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center has also boosted humanitarian efforts in Syria, including providing sheep to individuals in Aleppo and a $3.528 million project to provide health care at the Bab al-Hawa Hospital in northern Syria, the Riyadh-based Arab News reported Sunday.

The United Nations has estimated that Syria's war has cost the country about $388 billion, including some $120 billion in physical damage....

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-saudi-arabia-us-rebuild-syria-1270653

Erdogan has invited Trump to visit in the next year.