Houla Massacre, Syria: What If?

Caustic Logic said:
As you've noted, June 2 is just as SANA ran their two witnesses, in some minds the only two ever.
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Actually the ANNA articles were already published by then, May 30 the summary and May 31 the "knowledgeable woman", the "rebel insider" following on June 3. (if our source (ourselves) got it right :D)

And yes, Akrama is our source for the nitty gritty on the Abdulrazzak subfamilies, another key witness (known through a BBC article from May 28 while the other two come from the recent SPIEGEL interviews).

And IIRC Mohammed Tayyib used that army payment of $385 to get his family out of the country ... cough. Was about to ask about the video transcripts, feel free to open a new wiki page for them.
 
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Couple of mistakes. May 30 was the call asking for witnesses, to be brought in ON June 2. Okay, the female witness had already spoken to ANNA, in Houla, that same day. The other guy -from within rebel ranks BTW, spoke - from wherever, broadcast on the 3rd.

And on cousins, Mohammed only ebnters the scene later, with no witnessing of the battle that I know of. Malik was with a cousin that day and witnessed the killers "going up to" Fullah (approaching from?), visible walking for over a mile "until they were about 100 meters from the village." So this is after the attack, I guess, returning to there about 5:30 (timeline coming), behind a certain silver truck he knew from Fullah. But he wanted to make quite sure that's where they were taking the truck and watched them walk that way for a long time. Then he ran into his buddy Jihad Raslan and they started looking at the dead Abdul Razaqs.

That was around 7:30, Jihad says, with a flashlight (I checked-sunset was 7:35). He says the killers first arrived around 6:30 (or departing? "approaching an olive grove between the Alawite village of Fullah and Taldou"), he saw an old woman, an injured woman later, at around 6, and people kept running until about 7.

Both these buddies mention shelling in the past, no clue of the town invasion, shooting and screaming and so on, getting their first clue from happening to look off to the southwest and seeing soldiers in a direction suggesting where they were from, and only then going to see what happened just down the street. And this is the type of 'witness' the UN's CoI decided the case on the back of. :rolleyes:
 
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Quick notes:

In case anyone's confused, I gather Hassan and Hallak (rebel family) are the same, interchangeable names for some reason.

I added a timeline page at the wiki. Should be good when it's all filled in.

On the female ANNA/SANA witness (a knowledgeable woman - still could use a nicknmae we make up - names: Arifah, Daariyah, whichever one I found before, all mean 'knowledgeable.')
I too don't see the clock tower position being specified, nor the hospital driven by. But neither do these sound like things the CoI would make up. I half-suspect we're missing something here.

I'm inclined to say she was at the clock tower/mosque station. The insider says that was attacked first, around 2pm, and she says at that time "the checkpoint" was attacked. By "the" when there were several, it's most logically the one she was at. If so, by what yo've compiled, it's Qaws I'm not seeing much about. Being mobile, did it itself flee like soldiers did from the other positions? That would leave everything open to the rebels and toss all the CoI's related inferences, and half their case, out the window.

And I'm inclined to think "Arifah" did, somewhere in there, report driving by the hospital and seeing it burnt, confirming ("Jibril" is it?). I don't get their gripe with the claim -
The area around the hospital was in government hands throughout, so it is unclear when and how she was able to reach the given location
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They seem to have no good guess just what kind of witness she was, how she got her info, etc. Yet they feels she's some class of person that can't set foot in an area under (shudder) "government control," without withering up and blowing away, so how could she see the hospital? In an army van as they were evacuated from their position, for example? Crazy talk.

And besides, by her own side's collective account, the hospital and the security positions were attacked and decisively taken.

Also, if they reviewed her video testimony, they should have seen this:
“some men carried radio telephones (walkie-talkies) and we heard their conversations from inside our houses.”
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Domestic use of police scanners and the like in the US is not unknown, in Syria, I don't know. But it could be she's been told to obscure her ID and location a bit - by 'homes" she might mean security posts. Or it's like she says, and either way, it was probably by radio that she magically 'saw' things halfway across town. The CoI's or Mrs. AbuZayd's informed gripe, again:
The witness purported to know that in the northern part of the town “terrorists” were distributing ammunition to each other, but elsewhere the witness described her presence as being in the centre near the clock tower or further south during the same time frame
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She couldnt've seen that! Radio's can't transmit that far! Something! And you have an attempted duh-bunking of "Arifah's" account that would fail pretty badly if someone pulled it here.
 
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She doesn't describe much in "the northern part" of the town (contrary to the "rebel insider") and the ammo exchange went on "nearby" the hospital, meaning in the very south:

Knowledgeable Woman/SANA said:
The witness said the groups attacked checkpoints in the area simultaneously at around 1:30, with many law-enforcement personnel dying as the gunmen kept attacking for nearly three hours, and that after taking over the checkpoint they stole the weapons and ammo which was in it and began distributing them among themselves, then immediately set fire to the checkpoint along with the nearby hospital and the woods behind it.
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Unless we miss a whole other interview, all of their "contradictions" make no sense and look more like confusion (at best) on their part.

Timeline, good idea.
 
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Ah ... at the 'elevated' area of the waterworks ("the mountain") fell by 3:30, Arifah heard, complete with a throat-slicing of a man who was perhaps less than-fully Sunni, among others. Then distributing weapons for a bit ... While it's still not filled in, already it's interesting to look at the timeline in that zone as the two versions seem to converge around something apparently real. 3:30-4 pm shelling ceases, Shabiha arm and gather at the water works. 4-7:00 the Abdelrazak homes near the waterworks are hit. People like Jihad and Malik and "Fatima" tell us what happened there.

Side note on the Bakours: I had an odd thought that I doubt can get any further with our limitations. Nidal Bakkour, of course the local rebel leader of the assault, per "Arifah." And there are the two Baqur/Bakour defectors, NOW rebel soldiers, with some kind of info absolving the one Bakour. And another, our expert in the killings on Malik's (and Jiha'd) Saad street, Akrama Bakour.

BTW, the insider says Tripoli Street is Saad street - he was in that area.

Anyway, Arifah says after hearing the bragging about burning one soldier alive, there was another - she then heard “one armed man called Akhram Al Sayed saying we won’t kill him and we will show how he joined us, ie defected.” Called otherwise, perhaps, Akrama Sayed Bakkour?

Did he re-name his defector wards as if adopting sons? A weird thought -I found in Libya one captive soldier with family names Tajouri, Lousha, and Khalifah variously given as he was presented different times as slightly different people. But always Ibrahim was the first name, and his particular jailor who liked to hang around nearby smoking and treating the kid like a propto make his arguments against those damned loyalists, was perhaps coincidentally named Ibrahim Bietalmal.

So, it's a thought.
 
On some sidestep visited an older article from shortly after his visit on Alex Thomson's blog and read a comment there:

There are 5000 refugees nearby in Burj al-Qa’i looked after by the ICRC. Did you check them out? They fled from Taldou the night of the massacre. Why did they flee and why did the people you interviewed stay?
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Good question, btw. Maybe it's just me who missed the story, but I had to go looking where he got it from. ICRC has it and also reports that they and Syrian Arab Red Crescent provided help there and both were in Taldou the week between the massacre and the article on June 1. Added it to the timeline, "Aftermath".
 
There are 5000 refugees nearby in Burj al-Qa’i looked after by the ICRC. Did you check them out? They fled from Taldou the night of the massacre. Why did they flee and why did the people you interviewed stay?
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That's a good question, those who stayed. It doesn't sound like anyone's asked these thousands just what they fled from, or at least passed on their answers. That's all down to the few chosen ones, who fled into the arms of the "free army" almost as if into the arms of their own family. Allegedly, that's what they did. here
they were of chosen families and they were calling “we want to bring the regime down” and everybody knows they’re the armed men’s relatives.
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I looked a bit into Akram, the name. First, don't know why I typed Al Sayed. It was Al-Saleh. Akram means generous, a man's name, also sometimes used for God. There is no female version of the name I saw, and Akramah is only seemingly used in place names.

So Akrama Bakour is not likely his name. Probably the A is a remainder of a middle part. There's an Ikram Al-Saleh listed among the fighters (same link as above, as it happens), along with the lady's testimony specifying 'one armed man called Akram Al-Saleh.' So again, there's a decent chance it's Akram Al-Saleh Bakour, with the implications outlined above.
 
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Read somewhere that there is steady progress in getting rid of the terror gangs in Homs province and that the remaining area they control is the "triangle" Ar Rastan-Talbisah-Houla. Went looking for recently uploaded vids of Houla and found some of (peaceful) demonstrations. Around 200 people on August 10, same amount or a bit less on August 19 - here I suspect we see the round-about with the clock tower in Taldou town center -, and last Friday maybe 100 people here and bit more there - the latter curiously without any flags.
 
From SANA today (still mostly unreachable due to DDoS attacks, syndicated):

Terrorist Group Massacres Four in al-Houleh, Homs Countryside

An armed terrorist group massacred four citizens, including a mother and her two children, in al-Houleh area in Homs countryside.

An official source at the province told SANA’s correspondent said that the terrorists intercepted a car which was transporting a family from the village of al-Moua in Hama countryside to Damascus as the car was passing by al-Houleh, attacking the family and the driver, murdering them, mutilating their bodies with sharp implements, then burning the car to cover up their crimes.

The source said that the victims are Rabah al-Saleh and her sons Sleiman (15 years old) and Siwar al-Saad (13 years old) and the driver Zuheir Miya.
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Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East, or Arabic names, shouldn't hang their hats on names as stone cold evidence for anything.

Anecdotal evidence from my company is that approx 50% of the names, emails addresses and other identifiers in any of our systems do not match the real names of the people. They are fast and loose with names and spellings.

One situation yesterday defied all belief, but it seems normal to them.
 
funk de fino said:
Just seeing a trend. Thats all.
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Well, at least about the spelling you are of course right, given that those names are Arabic and there are several possibilities how to spell them in Latin, depending not least on the language in which you want them to be pronounced right. For example Houla is always spelled Hula in German articles. In important cases there will be an agreement over time, like Osama Bin Laden who was spelled in many different variations at first (Usama/Ussama/bin/ibn/Laden/Ladin etc.)
 
Childlike Empress said:
Well, at least about the spelling you are of course right, given that those names are Arabic and there are several possibilities how to spell them in Latin, depending not least on the language in which you want them to be pronounced right. For example Houla is always spelled Hula in German articles. In important cases there will be an agreement over time, like Osama Bin Laden who was spelled in many different variations at first (Usama/Ussama/bin/ibn/Laden/Ladin etc.)
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Not just speling but names also. Heck, few outside my family know my correct first name. I am known as something else for pretty much everything outside passport, flight tickets and drivers license.
 
You mean your first name isn't funk? :eek::p

Out of curiosity, do you call it "Middle East" in the UK or was this a translation for our Yankistani friends? Because in Germany, we call it "Nahost" (Near East) for obvious reasons.
 
Childlike Empress said:
You mean your first name isn't funk? :eek::p

Out of curiosity, do you call it "Middle East" in the UK or was this a translation for our Yankistani friends? Because in Germany, we call it "Nahost" (Near East) for obvious reasons.
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My middle name is not even de

Yes, we call it Middle East. China/Japan et al is called Far East. Nothing as strange as different languages!
 
What better time to bring this up and sound smart. I think the German way of re-interpreting the transliteration Houla, as Hula, is wrong.

I don't want to dig it up, but I think it was at documents.sy where I saw Syrians transliterated it occasionally as Hawla (IIRC). I remember thinking, "ah, like Taldou aka Tal-Daw."

So I think maybe the pronunciation, if any of us ever speaks about it, is not Hoo-la but How-la or Haw-la. That could be wrong, but it's worth getting a little confused over....

ETA: And, no,we still haven't heard the final word on it. It's just that at the moment the 4X-sized Daraya "massacre" is more interesting, with its hundred thousand witnesses already going on the record. Daraya is no Houla in that regard.
 
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