Barbaric image of Syrian rebel holding pilot's decapitated head on a barbeque is posted online... but is sickening picture a piece of propaganda?
It is a single moment of horrifying
barbarism that provides a fleeting insight into the unimaginable hatred
fuelling the war in Syria.
A young Syrian rebel fighter barbecues the severed and blood-spattered head of a government soldier, lifting it triumphantly by the forelock as he poses for a picture.
If this were not so stomach-churningly gruesome it would surely become one of the most enduring images of a conflict where the rules of war no longer apply and horror reigns... if it is indeed real.
Scroll down for video
Blood can be seen dripping from
the head through the grill onto the smouldering cinders of the
barbecue. While bloated and blood-stained, the face is relatively
unmarked, its features, including a well-trimmed moustache, clearly
recognisable.
The image - which is too graphic to publish in its original form - was posted on a pro-government website hosted in Lebanon and billed as proof of a war crime.
The boy in the picture is described as a member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the head that of an Assad-loyal helicopter pilot downed with his crew by a rebel surface-to-air missile.
There is no way of categorically verifying this image - with modern photographic technology, it could have been doctored as easily as it was apparently taken.
But if it is a fake, it sheds fresh light on a war where the line between truth and propaganda is blurred beyond recognition and the extraordinary lengths to which these enemies will go to undermine the other.
Dr
Craig Larkin, a middle east specialist at Kings College London, said -
real or not - the picture reveals the sinister and growing role of PR in
a war where simple brute force is no longer a ticket to victory.
Where once battlefields were confined to rubble-strewn city streets, war-churned fields and dusty desert plains, they have spread online as both sides vie to control their public image and discredit that of their opposition.
'With the conflict now more or less at stalemate, it is fast becoming a tit-for-tat war of propaganda over who is committing the most barbaric atrocities - both for the benefit of local and international communities.
'The rebels have turned wholeheartedly to Facebook to promote their mission, regularly posting pictures and videos of their fighters having been tortured or killed by Syrian forces.
'At the same time the government wants to justify to the world their line that they are fighting an Islamic terrorist uprising.
'It is an attempt to influence international policy by putting questions in countries like Britain's mind over whether they should be supporting such atrocities.'
The website on which it was originally posted, goes on to list the names of the helicopter crewmen, claiming they were shot down as they travelled from Latakia Airport, on the country's Mediterranean coast, to deliver humanitarian aid supplies to villages inland.
These 'martyrs' allegedly all survived the subsequent crash, in Idlib province, but were rounded up by the FSA's motley desert soldiers and all beheaded with butchers' knives and paraded through the streets on sticks.
A Syrian human rights group says a key
military unit loyal to President Bashar Assad is running secret prisons
holding hundreds of suspected regime opponents.
The Syria-based Violations Documentation Centre said in a report today that the regime's 4th Division runs detention centres in its bases in and around Damascus.
The division is commanded by Maher Assad, the president's younger brother. It is considered a pillar of loyalist forces and is charged with defending the capital.
The centre has tracked the dead, wounded and missing since the start of the uprising in March 2011. The claims could not be independently verified.
Other rights groups say tens of thousands of opposition members of their families have been detained during the two-year conflict.
According to the Independent, they
are named on the site as as General Souhel Akram, parachute Major
Youssef Ma’alla, Air Force
Captain Hussam Asaad, Air Force Captain Ayham Al-Hussain, 1st Lieutenant
Mohamed Ali Al-Dikar, 1st Lieutenant Maias Ramadan, and Sergeants Sarot
Ghanija and Mohamed Diben.
It is not clear to which of those men the head in the picture is supposed to belong.
Intriguingly, the website also implies that the executioners were Sunni and their victim from the Alawite sect of the Shia division of Islam to which President Bashar Assad belongs, The Independent reports.
Perhaps this in itself is not so surprising, but it goes on to describe the perpetrators of the crime as 'FSA gangs', while most such atrocities have so far been carried out by Islamist militants - not these ragtag - and mostly sectarian - militiamen.
'That they call them "gangs" is interesting', said Dr Larkin. 'It is an attempt to show there is no structure to the rebel uprising - that they are just a collection of disparate groups with no real purpose.
'The beheading element also plays into the government's grand discourse by highlighting beheading as a jihadist practice, further discrediting the uprising in the eyes of the West.'
When approached by the Independent, Syrian information minister Omran Zoubi said he could not confirm the veracity of the picture.
Meanwhile, it emerged today that Islamic militant group Hezbollah is backing mercenaries from neighbouring Lebanon to protect Shiites on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have come under attack from Sunni rebels.
Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of many of Lebanon's Shiites and a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has said his group is supporting the cadres of fighters who call themselves Popular Committees.
It is confirmation that the powerful Lebanese militant group is playing a growing role in the civil war just across the border.
Syria's regime is dominated by minority Alawites — an offshoot of Shiite Islam — while the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are mostly from the Sunni majority. Assad's major allies, Hezbollah and Iran, are both Shiite.
The sectarian tensions in
the civil war have spilled over to neighboring Lebanon, which has a
similar ethnic divide and a long, bitter history of civil war and
domination by Syria. Deadly gunbattles have broken out in Lebanon in
recent months between supporters of both sides of the Syrian war.
But more broadly, Hezbollah's deepening involvement shows how the Syrian civil war is exacerbating tensions between Shiites and Sunnis around the Middle East.
Syrian rebels accuse Hezbollah of fighting alongside Assad's troops and attacking rebels from inside Lebanese territory.
In recent months, fighting has
raged in and around several towns and villages inhabited by a community
of some 15,000 Lebanese Shiites who have lived for decades on the Syrian
side of a frontier that is not clearly demarcated in places and not
fully controlled by border authorities. They are mostly Lebanese
citizens, though some have dual citizenship or are Syrian.
Before Syria's uprising erupted two years ago, tens of thousands of Lebanese lived in Syria.
The Lebanese Shiite enclave on the Syrian side of the border is near the central city of Homs and across from Hermel, a predominantly Shiite region of northeastern Lebanon.
One commander of the Popular Committees said Shiite villages have been repeatedly attacked and some residents have been kidnapped and killed by rebels. He said that prompted local Shiites to take up arms to defend themselves.
'We are in a state of defense. We don't take sides (between rebels and regime forces). We are here to defend our people in the villages,' said the commander, Mahmoud, who gave only his first name out of fear for his own security.
'We don't attack any area. We only defend our villages.'
A young Syrian rebel fighter barbecues the severed and blood-spattered head of a government soldier, lifting it triumphantly by the forelock as he poses for a picture.
If this were not so stomach-churningly gruesome it would surely become one of the most enduring images of a conflict where the rules of war no longer apply and horror reigns... if it is indeed real.
Scroll down for video
Unprintable: A young Syrian rebel fighter
barbecues the severed and blood-spattered head of a government soldier,
lifting it by the forelock triumphantly as he poses for a picture
The image - which is too graphic to publish in its original form - was posted on a pro-government website hosted in Lebanon and billed as proof of a war crime.
The boy in the picture is described as a member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the head that of an Assad-loyal helicopter pilot downed with his crew by a rebel surface-to-air missile.
There is no way of categorically verifying this image - with modern photographic technology, it could have been doctored as easily as it was apparently taken.
But if it is a fake, it sheds fresh light on a war where the line between truth and propaganda is blurred beyond recognition and the extraordinary lengths to which these enemies will go to undermine the other.
Joint force: Members of Islamist Syrian rebel
group Jabhat al-Nusra hold a detainee as they transport him in Raqqa
province, eastern Syria in a picture taken on March 14
Imminent death: Free Syrian Army militiamen
arrest a 'traitor'. Captured enemies of both sides more often than not
suffer brutal executions in a war where rules no longer apply
Where once battlefields were confined to rubble-strewn city streets, war-churned fields and dusty desert plains, they have spread online as both sides vie to control their public image and discredit that of their opposition.
'With the conflict now more or less at stalemate, it is fast becoming a tit-for-tat war of propaganda over who is committing the most barbaric atrocities - both for the benefit of local and international communities.
'The rebels have turned wholeheartedly to Facebook to promote their mission, regularly posting pictures and videos of their fighters having been tortured or killed by Syrian forces.
Desolate: A man walks along a damaged street
filled with debris in Deir al-Zor yesterday, which has seen heavy
fighting in recent months
Warely bigger than his gun: A Syrian boy holds
an AK-47 assault rifle in Aleppo, left, and a young female fighter,
right, takes a break from battle. It is a war that has incorporated
everybody, irrespective of age or gender
So young: A boy sells cigarettes on a street in
Syria's northern city of Aleppo. In the poorer neighbourhoods of Aleppo,
immersed in conflict for the past nine months, it was not unusual even
before the war for teenagers to go out to work, but now what little
childhood remained for Aleppo youngsters has gone
'It is an attempt to influence international policy by putting questions in countries like Britain's mind over whether they should be supporting such atrocities.'
The website on which it was originally posted, goes on to list the names of the helicopter crewmen, claiming they were shot down as they travelled from Latakia Airport, on the country's Mediterranean coast, to deliver humanitarian aid supplies to villages inland.
These 'martyrs' allegedly all survived the subsequent crash, in Idlib province, but were rounded up by the FSA's motley desert soldiers and all beheaded with butchers' knives and paraded through the streets on sticks.
ASSAD 'RUNNING SECRET MILITARY PRISONS' HOLDING HUNDREDS OF SUSPECTED REGIME OPPONENTS
The Syria-based Violations Documentation Centre said in a report today that the regime's 4th Division runs detention centres in its bases in and around Damascus.
The division is commanded by Maher Assad, the president's younger brother. It is considered a pillar of loyalist forces and is charged with defending the capital.
The centre has tracked the dead, wounded and missing since the start of the uprising in March 2011. The claims could not be independently verified.
Other rights groups say tens of thousands of opposition members of their families have been detained during the two-year conflict.
It is not clear to which of those men the head in the picture is supposed to belong.
Intriguingly, the website also implies that the executioners were Sunni and their victim from the Alawite sect of the Shia division of Islam to which President Bashar Assad belongs, The Independent reports.
Perhaps this in itself is not so surprising, but it goes on to describe the perpetrators of the crime as 'FSA gangs', while most such atrocities have so far been carried out by Islamist militants - not these ragtag - and mostly sectarian - militiamen.
'That they call them "gangs" is interesting', said Dr Larkin. 'It is an attempt to show there is no structure to the rebel uprising - that they are just a collection of disparate groups with no real purpose.
'The beheading element also plays into the government's grand discourse by highlighting beheading as a jihadist practice, further discrediting the uprising in the eyes of the West.'
When approached by the Independent, Syrian information minister Omran Zoubi said he could not confirm the veracity of the picture.
Meanwhile, it emerged today that Islamic militant group Hezbollah is backing mercenaries from neighbouring Lebanon to protect Shiites on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have come under attack from Sunni rebels.
Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of many of Lebanon's Shiites and a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has said his group is supporting the cadres of fighters who call themselves Popular Committees.
It is confirmation that the powerful Lebanese militant group is playing a growing role in the civil war just across the border.
Syria's regime is dominated by minority Alawites — an offshoot of Shiite Islam — while the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are mostly from the Sunni majority. Assad's major allies, Hezbollah and Iran, are both Shiite.
Refugees: Lebanese Safiya Assaf, center, said
she had to flee the Syrian border town of Qusair along with her husband,
seven sons and four daughters, and their families after their home and
three shops repeatedly got hit during fighting
Ruthless campaign: Syrian policemen performing
during a live-fire military exercise. A Syrian human rights group today
said a key military unit loyal to President Bashar Assad is running
secret prisons holding hundreds of suspected regime opponents
Under attack: A member of the Free Syrian Army
runs along with two men to take cover from snipers loyal to Syria's
President Bashar al-Assad, in Deir al-Zor yesterday
But more broadly, Hezbollah's deepening involvement shows how the Syrian civil war is exacerbating tensions between Shiites and Sunnis around the Middle East.
Syrian rebels accuse Hezbollah of fighting alongside Assad's troops and attacking rebels from inside Lebanese territory.
Across the border: Mercenaries loyal to Islamic
militant group Hezbollah patrol neighbouring Lebanon to protect Shiites
on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have
come under attack from Sunni rebels
Defence force: Hezbollah's deepening involvement
shows how the Syrian civil war is exacerbating tensions between Shiites
and Sunnis around the Middle East
Camouflaged: Deadly gunbattles have broken out in Lebanon in recent months between supporters of both sides of the Syrian war
Before Syria's uprising erupted two years ago, tens of thousands of Lebanese lived in Syria.
The Lebanese Shiite enclave on the Syrian side of the border is near the central city of Homs and across from Hermel, a predominantly Shiite region of northeastern Lebanon.
One commander of the Popular Committees said Shiite villages have been repeatedly attacked and some residents have been kidnapped and killed by rebels. He said that prompted local Shiites to take up arms to defend themselves.
'We are in a state of defense. We don't take sides (between rebels and regime forces). We are here to defend our people in the villages,' said the commander, Mahmoud, who gave only his first name out of fear for his own security.
'We don't attack any area. We only defend our villages.'