Could you pull quote the relevant data?
If that's what was said, it's interesting. LGR, I am digging your thoughts here. Personally, I lean towards rebel victims, not NATO ones, from their intactness. I've seen the aftermath of Majer, and those bodies often wind up in many sad little pieces. They're all still, lined up, not all over, so at least bound, quite likely already dead. Se;f-described eyewitnesses, obviously, aren't always witnesses to damn thing except a suggestion of what to say to the media and rights groups to help give this story the right spin.
I asked earlier for help with old info, but apparently everyone sensed the trap, so I'll just spring it myself.
Gaddafi, or his thugs anyway,
are known to order people burned alive right before protesters/FFs overrun their positions. This was illustrated at least one before, in Benghazi, Feb 21.
The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92lmKpNMOvI&feature=player_embedded
User Ibnomar, who posted it, explained there: "Footage of burned soldiers Gaddafi had killed because they would not commit the brutality commanded to them"
An article adds
Five charred bodies were found Monday in military barracks in Benghazi, the second-largest city in Libya and a stronghold of anti-Gaddafi protesters. According to one of our Observers, the bodies were those of soldiers savagely massacred for refusing orders to fire against Libyan civilians protesting in the African nation.
This time, there is at least the one eyewitness, but back then the question begs an answer: how do they know why these guys were burned? What, a memo left on the wall explained it? And how did they know they were alive when burned? They weren't there, were they?
First: I'm not sure if the base cited, "the Al-Fudhail bin Omar base" is the same as the Katiba I've spoken of, but by context clues I think it is. Either way, the one is question was overrun on the 20th like the Katiba, which suffered much looting and arson aside from revnnge slayings. Only Abdel Fateh Younis, by defecting, was able to get the rest of those soldiers out safely.
So the next day we see five charred soldiers. And that "psychic" guess by their rebel finders. The world reported it pretty credulously, didn't they? They didn't say it was fact, just reported, the the regime did this. It came across as probably true, somehow.
Not so clear now, is it? No, not really in either direction yet.
But it gets clearer. Please recall we have five charred corpses in a military barracks (perhaps "the" barracks, the Katiba), martyrs for freedom shown proudly by their admirers, on February 21. We have the word they were soldiers at all, no clothes are discernable, let alone race. And then please consider this finding of the UN fact-finding mission to Libya [
PDF link], which commenced well after bombing had started and everyone already decided it was too late to turn back.
4. Violations committed by opposition groups
206. The Commission received several accounts of attacks on migrant workers carried out by armed opposition groups. […] Another case reported to the Commission related to the extra-judicial killing of five Chadian nationals who had been arrested on the basis of their nationality, and taken to the military barracks in Benghazi. Dozens of armed persons either in military style or civilian clothing were said to have poured kerosene on their bodies and burned them to death on 21 February.
Okay, any takers for coincidence?
Otherwise, damage control on rebel credibility regarding charred bodies, then or now?