Film shows alleged torture of patients

AS THE International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent yesterday waited in vain for a fifth day to enter the shattered Bab Amr district of Homs, the Turkish prime minister called for the immediate creation of humanitarian corridors to get aid to civilians caught up in fighting between the army and rebels.

While he urged the international community to put pressure on Damascus to permit the delivery of supplies, he did not commit to the establishment of aid corridors along Turkey’s 900km border with Syria.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s intervention followed the broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 of images appears to be of tortured patients said to have been filmed by an employee at the Homs military hospital.

The film, which presenter Jonathan Miller said had not been “independently verified”, focuses on eight or nine men, blindfolded and tied to their beds in one ward or two. Instruments of torture, a rubber whip and electrical flex, are shown on a table.

One bearded man shown repeatedly seems to bear the marks of a “severe beating” on his chest and his hand, one ankle bound to his bed by a rusty chain pulled tight.

The alleged whistleblower, who is shown only as a dark, fuzzy image, said patients who had limbs amputated often developed gangrene because they were not given antibiotics and some were taken away and brought back after being subjected to deadly abuse.

When the whistleblower protested at the mistreatment, he said he was branded a “traitor”.

Channel 4’s website quotes the man, interviewed by French photojournalist “Mani”, as saying: “I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons and by breaking their legs.” The journalist, who was in Homs in January and February of this year, smuggled the video out of Syria.

On the orders of the government, all victims of gunshot wounds and protest injuries must be treated in military hospitals.

UN Human Rights commissioner Navi Pillay said the material in the video “accords with what the [UN] commission of inquiry has produced – torture in hospitals, particularly the military hospitals”.

She said there was also evidence of torture in hospitals in Hama and Deraa and spoke of “sexual torture” by means of “electrocution of genitals of men and boys”. She warned torture was getting worse and civilians were being targeted.

The video has been corroborated also by Amnesty International which on October 25th last released a 39-page document, Health Crisis: Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers on torture in medical facilities, notably in Homs. It had been reported that security officers and medical staff had abused patients there.

People with gunshot or shrapnel wounds were said to have been denied treatment by hospital staff who regarded them as “traitors”. Amnesty said security forces blocked Red Crescent volunteers from access to the wounded and prevented teams from treating injured people.

Doctors and health workers were arrested and tortured for joining protests, sympathising with the opposition and clandestinely treating injured protesters and rebels.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos is due in Damascus today on a three-day visit, following condemnation of the government that had initially refused to admit her.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army bombarded a bridge used by refugees and the wounded fleeing from Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

On Monday, US senator John McCain called for air strikes to protect population centres and enable the establishment of safe havens “in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities”. He previously urged that rebels be armed.