Torture, starvation, executions: Eastern Ghouta civilians talk of life under terrorist rule

Eva Bartlett
RT

Last week I wrote about what civilians from Ghouta told me regarding unverified claims of the Syrian Army attacking them with chemicals, but they also talked about crimes committed by terrorists and the White Helmets’ role. 

Although benignly  dubbed  “rebels” by corporate media, the Salafist terrorist group Jaysh al-Islam are not fighting for freedom or human rights in Syria, nor are the other terrorist groups who formerly ruled in eastern Ghouta.

READ MORE: Syrian civilians from ground zero expose chemical hoax

It was Jaysh al-Islam which imprisoned Syrian civilians in cages, using them as human shields against potential bombing, and Jaysh al-Islam was among the terrorist groups firing missiles and mortars onto civilians in Damascus, killing over 10,000.

They, Faylaq al-Rahman, and the other terrorist factions occupying the region reigned with terror, beheading men and women and starving the people.

Hellish rule of Jaysh al-Islam: Starvation and executions by sword

When I visited eastern Ghouta and the Horjilleh center for displaced people just south of Damascus—people mostly from Ghouta now—I asked about their lives under the rule of Jaysh al-Islam and others, including why they had been starving in the first place. The reply was, as I and others  heard in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, and al-Waer, the terrorists stole aid and controlled all food, only selling food at extortionist prices which ordinary people could not afford.

Sabah al-Mushref spoke of the callousness of terrorists in Hammouriyeh and Zamalka towards children and how her own children used to scavenge from the garbage of terrorist leaders who had ample food.

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Prediction of New False-Flag Gas Attack in Syria Seems to Fit US Escalation Plans

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

If a chemical weapons “attack” comes to pass in the place it has been predicted, it would be the first such provocation blamed on Assad to take place in territory occupied by a foreign power, likely triggering an intensified military response from the U.S.

DAMASCUS – Though last month’s unilateral bombing of Syria by the U.S., U.K. and France came and went, the threat of foreign military intervention targeting the Syrian government remains, particularly given Syria’s success in defeating the foreign-funded terrorist proxies that have prolonged the Syrian conflict for seven long years. While Israel seems to have taken it upon itself to militarily intervene in Syria to prevent the Syrian government from continuing to reclaim its lost territory, the other major powers that have long sought the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have seemed to step back from intervening in Syria, unless another chemical weapons attack were to take place and be blamed on Assad.
 
For that reason, a recent article, published in early May by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, should raise concern, as it exposes alleged plans for another gas-attack provocation in Syria. According to the report, preparations for a staged chemical weapons attack began late last month as civilians were relocated to a territory near Jafra oil field in Eastern Syria, where they will participate in a staged filming of a chemical-weapons attack scene. According to South Front, a U.S. military garrison was recently established in this area. The report, based on the testimony of an anonymous member of the Syrian security services, claimed that an attack was being planned by U.S. security services and would employ “prohibited substances” against a group of civilians. 

The source also noted that the operation itself was being led by a former Daesh (ISIS) militant, Mishan Idris Hamash. Though this may seem unusual, the U.S. and its proxy force in Eastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have been known to collaborate with former Daesh forces, including militias composed of former Daesh fighters under the SDF banner. 

If this report is true, it would not be the first time that such warnings were made public prior to chemical weapons attacks in Syria that were ultimately blamed on the Syrian government. For instance, in late March, the Russian Ministry of Defense had warned that a chemical weapons “provocation” was being planned in Eastern Ghouta by rebel groups in the area as part of a last-ditch attempt to prevent being run out of the Damascus suburb by the Syrian Arab Army. Just a few weeks later, a chemical weapons attack in Douma – widely believed to have been staged – took place and, prior to any investigation, prompted the U.S., U.K. and France to bomb the Syrian government, which they blamed for the attack.

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Russia Predicts Fake Syrian Chemical Attack One Month Before - Reuters Covers the Story

The Fifth Column

 

(TFC) – Sometimes bizarre claims by foreign governments are so shocking they are dismissed and never thought of again. But what happens when the events predicted occur exactly as described?

A stub of an article published by Reuters on March 13, 2018, almost a month before the purported chemical attack in Ghouta, reads:

“Russia said on Tuesday it had information that the United States planned to bomb the government quarter in Damascus on an invented pretext, and said it would respond militarily if it felt Russian lives were threatened by such an attack.
Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s General Staff, said Moscow had information that rebels in the enclave of eastern Ghouta were planning to fake a chemical weapons attack against civilians and blame it on the Syrian army.”

(Link to the original article here. Link to UK version of article here. Link to archived article in case it is removed here.)

The described attack occurred on April 8, 2018. The West then attacked Syria.

Furthermore, after the chemical attack and western response, Russia has now claimed it has evidence the west was complicit in staging the attack.

Video of conference spoke of by Reuters.

Sputnik

The facts behind the ‘staged’ video of kids’ chemical weapons drill in Syria

RT 

A video described as showing Syrian children being trained to fake the symptoms of a chemical weapons attack has been widely shared online with fake and menacing misinformation. 

RT Digital investigated the origins of the video and found that it doesn’t depict children being coerced and prepared for future propaganda videos, as falsely suggested by users on Twitter.

The video is more than four years old and the actions carried out by the children in the video are part of a play by a group called the Nesma Organization based in eastern Ghouta.

[...]

The original copy of the video was uploaded to YouTube on September 19, 2013. The Nesma Organization advertised the play on its Facebook account on September 18 and 19, 2013 – the exact timeframe the original video was uploaded to the YouTube channel whose name roughly translates into English as Rural Damascus Media.

Other videos from the Rural Damascus Media have also been shared by the Nesma Organisation’s Facebook page.

Rural Damascus Media’s description of the video reads: “The aim of the play was to teach children the horrors of being under attack by chemical weapons and to show the world its neglect and failure to take action on a man who would use such weapons against his own citizens.”

Rural Damascus Media’s YouTube channel also contains videos of rallies where FSA (Free Syrian Army) and Al-Qaeda flags were waved.

The Nesma Organisation also has a Facebook history of sharing content from the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union. The Nesma Organisation is the Arabic translation, but the group also calls itself Aura Volunteers.

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The Truth About Syria: A Summary of the Syria Crisis and How We Got to the Latest False Flag Chemical Attack

Blackstone Intelligence Network

Syria - Any U.S. Strike Will Lead to Escalation

Comment: And escalation is of course, exactly what they want...

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Moon of Alabama

Yesterday's alleged 'gas attack' in east Ghouta likely never happened. A video shows a number of presumably dead kids in a basement or dark apartment. Another video shows an undamaged yellow gas cylinder which, we are told, was dropped from some unseen helicopter and crashed through a concrete roof. We do not know when or where these videos were made.

Besides those videos of murky origin we hear claims from two 'western' paid anti-Syrian propaganda organizations, the White Helmets and SAMS, which claim hundreds were wounded in a chlorine attack.

Interestingly the MI6 outlet in Coventry, the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), does not confirm a 'gas' incident. In its version of events some 40 people died after their shelter collapsed:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a higher death toll, saying at least 80 people were killed in Douma, including around 40 who died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them.

Main stream media, which have quoted SOHR for years, now ignore it and report of a 'chemical attack' as if it were a proven reality.

All this happens at a moment when the Syrian army is victorious and Trump had just announced that he wants the U.S. to leave Syria. We noted that something similar happened exactly a year ago when similar illogical claims were made:

We are told to believe that each time the U.S. pulls back from the war on Syria the Syrian government is responding with a 'chemical attack' that pulls the U.S. back in.

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Towards a Post-War in the Greater Middle East

Thierry Meyssan
VoltaireNet.org 

Contrary to the picture portrayed by Atlanticist propaganda, Thierry Meyssan takes a long-term view of international relations. For him, what we have seen in Syria over the last seven years is not a civil war, but rather a seventeen-year regional war in the greater Middle East. This vast conflict, from which Russia emerges victor over NATO, is gradually giving rise to a new world equilibrium.

All wars end with winners and losers. The seventeen years we have just lived through in the "Greater Middle East" is no exception. Yet, while Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi have been eliminated and Syria is winning, the only real losers are the Arab people.

At the most, one can pretend to believe that the problem concerns only Syria. And that in Syria, it is circumscribed to Ghouta. And that in Ghouta, the Army of Islam has been defeated. Yet, this episode will not be enough to declare the end of the hostilities that have ravaged the region, destroyed entire cities and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

Nevertheless, the surviving myth that "civil wars" spread by contagion [1] allows the 130 states and international organizations that participated in the "Friends of Syria" meetings to shirk their responsibilities and to hold their heads high. Furthermore, since they will never admit failure, they will continue to perpetrate their abuses in other theaters of operation. In other words: their war will soon be over in this region, but it will resume elsewhere.

From this point of view, what has played out in Syria since the US declaration of war nearly 15 years ago - i.e. when the Syrian Accountability Act was passed into law in December 2003 - will have shaped the world Order that is currently emerging. Indeed, while almost all the states in the "Greater Middle East" have been weakened or completely wrecked, Syria is the only one still standing and independent.

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Photo and Video Diary from Eastern Ghouta, Syria – by Vanessa Beeley

 Driving towards Wafedin camp in Eastern Ghouta that has been receiving civilian evacuees from Eastern Ghouta. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire

Truth always reveals itself. We have seen it in Homs, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Madaya – in all areas of Syria where civilians are liberated from the US Coalition proxy army of terrorist groups. Now it is the turn of Eastern Ghouta to expose the Western corporate media campaign for the sensationalist propaganda it has been for the last seven years of this senseless conflict, externally imposed upon the sovereign nation of Syria and its people.

The UN held a press briefing yesterday in Damascus. We arrived late but in time to hear UN figures of 75,000 civilians who have escaped Eastern Ghouta for the safety of the Syrian government centres set up to receive these traumatised civilians as they flee the terrorist occupation of their towns and villages via the Syrian/Russian established and negotiated humanitarian corridors.

According to a UN official, 25,000 of those civilians have been reunited with their families by the Syrian government, the remaining 50,000 are in the IDP centres and are being taken care of by Syrian civil society organisations.

These UN figures are lower than the Syrian Government and Russian negotiator numbers but it is not unusual for the UN to be out of alignment in this respect. Syrian Arab News Agency recently reported numbers closer to 135,000.  However these UN figures still expose western media reporting of much lower numbers as deeply flawed at best, deliberately misleading at worst.

Assaf Abood from BBC Arabic told me that the UN is not doing enough to assist at these IDP centres and he raised this question during the meeting. He also informed me that there are an estimated 130,000 civilians still in Jaish Al Islam controlled Douma.

Negotiations are ongoing between Russia, the Syrian Government and Jaish Al Islam (a Saudi financed terrorist faction) to decide upon their ultimate evacuation destination, among other important conditions for their surrender  and the final release of all civilians under their control.

It is worth mentioning that Jaish Al Islam have the reputation of being the most brutal & extremist of the terrorist occupiers in Eastern Ghouta. The notorious “repentance prison” is located here:

“These terrorists are taking the civilians as hostages, they have a jail in Douma (Eastern Ghouta’s main city) called the Jail of Toubah, do you know what Toubah means in Arabic? It’s ‘Repentance’, you don’t leave this jail until you repent. They have thousands of innocent people taken prisoners, civilians, and put in this jail in Douma. And from time to time they take women and children, put them in cages and drive them into the streets” ~ Syria News

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