British TV Airs Footage of 'Patients Tortured in Syrian Hospital'
Secretly filmed footage shown by a British TV station shows what the report said was evidence of patients being tortured in a military hospital in the battered Syrian city of Homs.
Images broadcast by Channel 4 on Monday show bandaged patients chained to hospital beds by their ankles, while a whip and electrical cable lie nearby.
The chest of one man, with bandaged eyes, is striped by horizontal red marks that appear to have been caused by whipping, according to a forensic expert interviewed by Channel 4.
The channel said the film was shot in the past three months by a medical worker in a military hospital in Homs and smuggled out of Syria by a French journalist, but said they were unable to independently verify the images.
"I've seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons and by breaking their legs," the hospital worker says in the video, the comments translated into English.
"They operate without anesthetics. I saw them slamming detainees' heads against walls. They shackle the patients to the beds. They deny them water."
Homs had been pounded by Syrian forces for nearly four weeks until Thursday, when rebel troops withdrew from the central Syrian city's Baba Amr district in the face of overwhelmingly superior firepower.
The Red Cross were on Tuesday negotiating for a fourth day to be allowed to deliver aid to Baba Amr and evacuate the wounded.
New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that Syrian forces had killed some 700 people and wounded thousands in the 27-day bombardment, with shells sometimes falling at the rate of 100 an hour.
06 March 2012, 21:46
20
what were these western countries expecting from this murderous regime? they should have asked the lebanese people to tell them about this regime.....
07 March 2012, 04:28
11
Syrian military defending Syrians by torturing them in hospitals. They're the defenders of Syria about as much as Huzb Allah is a resistance movement, meaning not at all.
07 March 2012, 10:30
10
Flame, the more you open your mouth the more I see what a complete hater of humanity you are. What's the matter with you? Were you traumatized as a child? Abused in some way? Can you tell the difference between innocent civilians and the butcher who is oppressing them? You are as sour as rotten milk and decaying on the inside to have the audacity to type such filth.
07 March 2012, 11:57
10
Now Guantanamo Bay Prison sounds like Luxury accomomdations! Where are all those who were outraged at Abou Ghreib?
Torturing the injured in the hospital shows how cowardly, low and inhumane are the men of the regime.
07 March 2012, 12:05
10
If the Lebanese government had done the same thing with the Kataeb militia thugs way back when they sparked the burning of the country, we would have avoided all the misery that befell Lebanon. So do not blame the Syrian government. They are not as dumb as we are.
