{"id":19854,"date":"2013-05-13T06:22:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T14:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=19854"},"modified":"2013-05-14T13:09:02","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T21:09:02","slug":"syrian-rebel-commander-cuts-organs-out-of-assad-soldiers-body-and-eats-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/13\/syrian-rebel-commander-cuts-organs-out-of-assad-soldiers-body-and-eats-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Rebel Commander Cuts Organs Out of Assad Soldier’s Body and Eats Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aryn Baker at TIME reports<\/a> on a video out of Syria depicting the savagery of rebel commander\u00a0Khalid al-Hamad:<\/p>\n

The video starts out like so many of the dozens coming out of the war in\u00a0Syria\u00a0every day, with the camera hovering over the body of a dead Syrian soldier. But the next frame makes it clear why this video, smuggled out of the city of Homs and into\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0with a rebel fighter, and obtained by TIME in April, is particularly shocking. In the video a man who is believed to be a rebel commander named Khalid al-Hamad, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar,\u00a0bends over the government soldier, knife in hand. With his right hand he moves what appears to be the dead man\u2019s heart onto a flat piece of wood or metal lying across the body. With his left hand he pulls what appears to be a lung across the open cavity in the man\u2019s chest. According to two of Abu Sakkar\u2019s fellow rebels, who said they were present at the scene, Abu Sakkar had cut the organs out of the man\u2019s body. The man believed to be Abu Sakkar then works\u00a0his knife through the flesh of the dead man\u2019s torso before he stands to face the camera, holding an organ in each hand. \u201cI swear we will eat from your hearts and livers, you dogs of Bashar,\u201d he says, referring to supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Off camera, a small crowd can be heard calling out\u00a0\u201cAllahu akbar\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 God is great. Then the man raises one of the bloodied organs to his lips and starts to tear off a chunk with his teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama has been helping his friends in Saudi Arabia and Qatar to provide weapons and other aid to Syrian rebels with little ability to control where they end up. Undoubtedly, people like\u00a0al-Hamad have received such help.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> The Syrian National Coalition has publicly condemned<\/a> what they saw in the gruesome video described above, insisting it doesn’t represent the opposition’s morals. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch condemned<\/a> the actions in the video as war crimes and said they’ve confirmed the individual performing them is in fact\u00a0al-Hamad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aryn Baker at TIME reports on a video out of Syria depicting the savagery of rebel commander\u00a0Khalid al-Hamad: The video starts out like so many of the dozens coming out of the war in\u00a0Syria\u00a0every day, with the camera hovering over the body of a dead Syrian soldier. But the next frame makes it clear why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19854"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19896,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19854\/revisions\/19896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19854"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}