#Sednaya Military Prison

[riyadhvision]

US says Syrians have built crematorium near prison

US says Syrians have built crematorium near prison

The United States has evidence the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has built a crematorium near the site of its Sednaya prison.

:: The United States has evidence the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has built a crematorium near the site of its Sednaya prison, a State Department official said on Monday.

Stuart Jones, the acting assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs,…

[narcisbolgor-blog]

With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back

(CNN)The U.S.-led coalition against ISIS waged a series of airstrikes against a military convoy of loyalists to the Syrian regime, CNN has confirmed.

According to a U.S. defense official, a convoy of 20 pro-regime vehicles was headed toward al-Tanf, a military base on the Syrian-Jordanian border, on Wednesday night.

Al-Tanf, which Russian warplanes bombed a year ago in two successive airstrikes, is occupied by U.S. and British Special Forces that are advising an anti-ISIS Syrian rebel group known as Maghawir al-Thawra, or the Commandos of the Revolution.

Thirteen of the vehicles apparently breached the "de-confliction zone" around the base, an area that the coalition has communicated to Moscow to stay well clear of.

U.S. warplanes were first scrambled in a "show of force" against the oncoming convoy. But then five vehicles kept approaching, coming within 29 kilometers of the base when they were finally hit by U.S. aircraft.

The coalition confirmed that the convoy posed a direct threat to "U.S. partner forces" -- "despite Russian attempts to dissuade pro-regime movement" toward the base.

The strike marks the first time that the Pentagon has offered aerial protection to its Arab proxies under assault from pro-Syrian militias.

The timing of this American escalation is noteworthy for several reasons.

First, it comes just weeks after U.S. warships in the Mediterranean fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Assad's Shayrat airbase, which Western intelligence agencies allege was used to launch a deadly chemical weapons attack in northern Syria. That intervention was the first time the U.S. directly attacked the Syrian government.

Second, the al-Tanf skirmish comes just hours after President Donald Trump is scheduled to depart Washington for a tour of the Middle East, his first overseas trip since assuming office. He will travel to Jerusalem and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where he is expected to reassure Israel and America's Sunni Gulf allies that his administration is committed to containing and deterring Iran, now the principal security underwriter of the Assad regime in Syria.

Third, the U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned two senior Iranian officials, one of whom, the department said in a press statement, "facilitated the sale of explosives and provided other support to Syria." The other was "the director of the organization responsible for Iran's solid-fueled ballistic missile program."

Fourth, the U.S. airstrikes follow on a State Department briefing about the presence of a crematorium for incinerating corpses of political prisoners at the notorious Sednaya jail in Damascus. Allegations about such a facility, reminiscent of the Third Reich's Final Solution, have circulated in international media for months, yet the U.S. government only just confirmed them this week.

Containing Iran

Iran is thought to have expansionist ambitions, and these ambitions have begun to chafe under a slowly increasing U.S. hard power deployment in the region, opposition sources have told CNN.

Tlass Salameh, the commander of the Lions of the East Brigade, said that his men are located 20 kilometers from al-Tanf. The Lions of the East receive support from a covert CIA program designed to train and arm vetted Syrian rebel groups, according to Salameh.

Recruits of that program are allowed to fight the Syrian regime and its allied militias, including those imported from Lebanon and Iraq and beholden to Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force.

On Monday, Iran's state-run Fars News Agency claimed that Lebanese Hezbollah, a prominent IRGC-QC proxy, had deployed "12 regiments with 1,000 fighters" to southern Syria "to face the US-backed militants in al-Tanf border crossing."

"The regime is bombing us in 25 to 30 raids on a daily basis. Russia hit us once or twice," Salameh told CNN. "We have a post in Mafraq Kabid on the Damascus-Baghdad highway, which is now controlled by the Iranian and [Lebanese] Hezbollah militias."

That transnational highway is crucial to Iranian plans to construct a ground corridor, or land bridge, from Tehran all the way to Mediterranean coast.

Rebel sources confirm a report published this week by Britain's Guardian newspaper to that effect, noting that the original route for this corridor has recently shifted from northern Syria, running through the heartland of Syrian Kurdish territory, to Sunni Arab tribal south of the country. The outlet suggested that the change of latitude owed to a growing presence of U.S. troops and U.S.-run military installations the north, used by various anti-ISIS forces.

Partition of Syria

Concerns over the long-term implications of the U.S. presence, for example, led the regime to oppose an expanded role for the Syrian opposition in the fight against ISIS, especially in Raqqa, the terror group's de facto capital.

Now, sources say, Damascus and Tehran are keen to preempt any such American deterrent in the south, along the new route for a land bridge even if doing so slows or retards the coalition's war against ISIS.

"The regime is preventing us from fighting ISIS," Salameh said. "Not a single attack waged by them is directed against ISIS, even though ISIS is only 20 kilometers meters away from the regime while we are 80 kilometers away."

Salameh added that Iranian-built militias have lately reconquered terrain liberated from ISIS by the coalition and the Lions of the East.

Muhannad al-Talla, commander of Maghawir al-Thawrah, the Pentagon-backed rebel group embedded with U.S. and British Special Forces at al-Tanf, agreed with this assessment, and with the idea of an Iranian ground corridor.

"The Russians, the Iranians and the regime are harassing us now. After we liberated some areas, they came and took them," al-Talla said. "They're trying to open the highway from Baghdad to Damascus, in other words from Tehran to Beirut. They are advancing toward us and toward eastern Syria. This has been happening for two weeks now."

Some policymakers the U.S. and Syria believe that a deal to create "de-escalation zones," brokered in Astana, Kazakhstan earlier this month by Russia, Iran and Turkey, was designed to preempt any American plan to unilaterally establish safe zones in Syria.

In March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington would set up "interim zones of stability" to allow refugees to return to Syria.

Officials in the U.S. State Department have told CNN that the terminology used by Russia in Astana deliberately echoed Tillerson's position. Some Middle East analysts have argued that the long-term consequence of such a policy establishing externally-enforced zones, if not spheres of influence amounts to the soft partitioning of Syria.

According to Reuters, citing Western intelligence sources, American and British Special Forces are building out al-Tanf to encompass a larger role in flushing ISIS out of the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. So a similar enlargement of the U.S. garrison in the south is indeed likely.

At the same time, the Assad regime has also become more publicly critical of Jordan, a key Arab member of the anti-ISIS coalition, owing to reports that the Jordanian army was mobilizing near the Syrian border.

Jordan oversees two large refugee camps inside Syria which host displaced people from areas previously or currently controlled by ISIS, making them a ongoing security concern for the Hashemite kingdom. A safe zone near the Syrian-Jordanian border, backed by Arab and western powers, is clearly viewed as a provocation to Damascus and Tehran.

The tension between the regime and Amman in recent weeks came after unprecedented remarks from Jordanian authorities that Jordan would open its border crossings with Syria if the regime, not the rebels, controlled the borderlands, over fears that Al Qaeda and ISIS jihadists will cross into Jordan.

The de-escalation zones are also believed, by U.S. and opposition sources, to free up time and resources for the regime to advance into the American sphere of influence in ISIS areas.

The Syrian regime and Iran probably calculated that the U.S. would not come to the aid of its rebel allies in al-Tanf, as it untraditionally did on Wednesday.

In fact, al-Talla, the commander of Maghawir al-Thawrah, said, a day before the airstrikes he was told by U.S. forces that his men would be relocated from al-Tanf to another position in Syria to avoid open conflict with pro-Assad elements.

That plan may have now changed.

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** Source Here: With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back ************************************ =>

With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back was originally posted by 11 VA Viral News

[scottbcrowley2]

U.S. accuses Syria of mass executions and burning bodies - Mon, 15 May 2017 PST

The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium inside its notorious Sednaya military prison outside Damascus to clandestinely dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility. U.S. accuses Syria of mass executions and burning bodies - Mon, 15 May 2017 PST

[syrianfamilies]

BEIRUT (Reuters) - For six years Amina al-Khoulani hoped her brothers Majd and Abdelsattar were alive, albeit cut off in a Syrian government prison after their arrest early in Syria’s war. 

But last week, newly published state records obtained by relatives told her the men died back in 2013, just weeks after the family last saw them through a metal fence during a visit to the Sednaya military jail near Damascus.

“We used to hear a lot of reports that they had been executed. We know that the regime is criminal and is capable of doing this but you always have hope that this is untrue,” al-Khoulani, a refugee in Britain, said in a video call.

After years of government silence about the fate of tens of thousands of people that rights groups say have been forcibly disappeared in the war, authorities have begun quietly updating registers to acknowledge hundreds of their deaths, according to Syrians who have recently learnt of their relatives’ fate.

(Source: Reuters) 

31 July 2018

[keywestlou]

HITLER REVISITED

History repeats itself. No question. In one fashion or another.

Recall Auschwitz. Hitler’s pride. An example of German efficiency.

The gas chambers were so effective, that the bodies could not be disposed of fast enough. Mass graves were not doing the job. Crematoriums came into play. Burn the bodies! Quicker, cleaner, less burdensome. Also, ashes not discoverable in later years. Mass graves are.

Some 70 years later comes Syria’s Assad. Guilty of mass executions. Problem was body disposition and secrecy. A crematorium was constructed at Sednaya Military Prison. Problem resolved.

Note Assad has killed thousands without resort to judicial proceedings.

Assad is supported by Russia and Saudi Arabia. The United States supports the rebels opposing Assad. Russia is supposedly not the U.S.’s friend. Perhaps Trump’s however. Saudi Arabia has become a much closer friend since last week’s visit by Trump. Trump was sucked up to big time.

Zeroing in on Saudi Arabia, how can the U.S. be friends with a friend and supporter of a mass executioner such as Assad?

Trump forgets who our friends are. He plays up to despots while insulting and ignoring those who have been friends of the U.S. for years.

I was correct re the effect of the south wind yesterday. The rain storm came at 6:30 last night. Heavy and prolonged. Streets flooded.

The last block to my home deeper in rain water than I have ever seen. I questioned whether I should drive it. The alternative was walking through water 12-18 inches deep. I said screw it. Hit the pedal hard and rammed through the water.

The Chart Room first last night. Kevin and Holly there. John bartending. Quiet. We chatted for a couple of hours. A lot of laughing involved.

Stopped at Outback on the way home for dinner.

Memorial Day Weekend begins tomorrow. Key West will be buried in tourists. Everyone having a good time.

Much will be going on. One of the highlights of the weekend is the Schooner Wharf Minimal Regatta sunday. Don’t miss it! Lots of laughs!

Dr. Cori Convertino is a talented woman. She is the Curator at the Key West Art and Historical Society. Located at the Custom House.

Tomorrow night a new exhibit opens. One Dr. Convertino has spent months working on. Overseas to the Keys: Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway Exhibit.

John Kennedy had a way of inspiring. He made us feel we could accomplish the impossible. He gave us pride.

On this day in 1961, Kennedy announced his plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

We believed him!

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon on July 21, 1969.

Kennedy pride. Not the Trump pride Trump tries to foist on us.

Staying with Trump for a moment, Trump reminds me of what happens when a pebble is thrown into a pool of water. The circle caused where the pebble hit grows. Ring after ring. Each larger than the previous

Sort of like……Woe the web we weave when first we seek to deceive.

Enjoy your day!

          HITLER REVISITED was originally published on Key West Lou

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back

(CNN)The U.S.-led coalition against ISIS waged a series of airstrikes against a military convoy of loyalists to the Syrian regime, CNN has confirmed.

According to a U.S. defense official, a convoy of 20 pro-regime vehicles was headed toward al-Tanf, a military base on the Syrian-Jordanian border, on Wednesday night.

Al-Tanf, which Russian warplanes bombed a year ago in two successive airstrikes, is occupied by U.S. and British Special Forces that are advising an anti-ISIS Syrian rebel group known as Maghawir al-Thawra, or the Commandos of the Revolution.

Thirteen of the vehicles apparently breached the "de-confliction zone" around the base, an area that the coalition has communicated to Moscow to stay well clear of.

U.S. warplanes were first scrambled in a "show of force" against the oncoming convoy. But then five vehicles kept approaching, coming within 29 kilometers of the base when they were finally hit by U.S. aircraft.

The coalition confirmed that the convoy posed a direct threat to "U.S. partner forces" -- "despite Russian attempts to dissuade pro-regime movement" toward the base.

The strike marks the first time that the Pentagon has offered aerial protection to its Arab proxies under assault from pro-Syrian militias.

The timing of this American escalation is noteworthy for several reasons.

First, it comes just weeks after U.S. warships in the Mediterranean fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Assad's Shayrat airbase, which Western intelligence agencies allege was used to launch a deadly chemical weapons attack in northern Syria. That intervention was the first time the U.S. directly attacked the Syrian government.

Second, the al-Tanf skirmish comes just hours after President Donald Trump is scheduled to depart Washington for a tour of the Middle East, his first overseas trip since assuming office. He will travel to Jerusalem and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where he is expected to reassure Israel and America's Sunni Gulf allies that his administration is committed to containing and deterring Iran, now the principal security underwriter of the Assad regime in Syria.

Third, the U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned two senior Iranian officials, one of whom, the department said in a press statement, "facilitated the sale of explosives and provided other support to Syria." The other was "the director of the organization responsible for Iran's solid-fueled ballistic missile program."

Fourth, the U.S. airstrikes follow on a State Department briefing about the presence of a crematorium for incinerating corpses of political prisoners at the notorious Sednaya jail in Damascus. Allegations about such a facility, reminiscent of the Third Reich's Final Solution, have circulated in international media for months, yet the U.S. government only just confirmed them this week.

Containing Iran

Iran is thought to have expansionist ambitions, and these ambitions have begun to chafe under a slowly increasing U.S. hard power deployment in the region, opposition sources have told CNN.

Tlass Salameh, the commander of the Lions of the East Brigade, said that his men are located 20 kilometers from al-Tanf. The Lions of the East receive support from a covert CIA program designed to train and arm vetted Syrian rebel groups, according to Salameh.

Recruits of that program are allowed to fight the Syrian regime and its allied militias, including those imported from Lebanon and Iraq and beholden to Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force.

On Monday, Iran's state-run Fars News Agency claimed that Lebanese Hezbollah, a prominent IRGC-QC proxy, had deployed "12 regiments with 1,000 fighters" to southern Syria "to face the US-backed militants in al-Tanf border crossing."

"The regime is bombing us in 25 to 30 raids on a daily basis. Russia hit us once or twice," Salameh told CNN. "We have a post in Mafraq Kabid on the Damascus-Baghdad highway, which is now controlled by the Iranian and [Lebanese] Hezbollah militias."

That transnational highway is crucial to Iranian plans to construct a ground corridor, or land bridge, from Tehran all the way to Mediterranean coast.

Rebel sources confirm a report published this week by Britain's Guardian newspaper to that effect, noting that the original route for this corridor has recently shifted from northern Syria, running through the heartland of Syrian Kurdish territory, to Sunni Arab tribal south of the country. The outlet suggested that the change of latitude owed to a growing presence of U.S. troops and U.S.-run military installations the north, used by various anti-ISIS forces.

Partition of Syria

Concerns over the long-term implications of the U.S. presence, for example, led the regime to oppose an expanded role for the Syrian opposition in the fight against ISIS, especially in Raqqa, the terror group's de facto capital.

Now, sources say, Damascus and Tehran are keen to preempt any such American deterrent in the south, along the new route for a land bridge even if doing so slows or retards the coalition's war against ISIS.

"The regime is preventing us from fighting ISIS," Salameh said. "Not a single attack waged by them is directed against ISIS, even though ISIS is only 20 kilometers meters away from the regime while we are 80 kilometers away."

Salameh added that Iranian-built militias have lately reconquered terrain liberated from ISIS by the coalition and the Lions of the East.

Muhannad al-Talla, commander of Maghawir al-Thawrah, the Pentagon-backed rebel group embedded with U.S. and British Special Forces at al-Tanf, agreed with this assessment, and with the idea of an Iranian ground corridor.

"The Russians, the Iranians and the regime are harassing us now. After we liberated some areas, they came and took them," al-Talla said. "They're trying to open the highway from Baghdad to Damascus, in other words from Tehran to Beirut. They are advancing toward us and toward eastern Syria. This has been happening for two weeks now."

Some policymakers the U.S. and Syria believe that a deal to create "de-escalation zones," brokered in Astana, Kazakhstan earlier this month by Russia, Iran and Turkey, was designed to preempt any American plan to unilaterally establish safe zones in Syria.

In March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington would set up "interim zones of stability" to allow refugees to return to Syria.

Officials in the U.S. State Department have told CNN that the terminology used by Russia in Astana deliberately echoed Tillerson's position. Some Middle East analysts have argued that the long-term consequence of such a policy establishing externally-enforced zones, if not spheres of influence amounts to the soft partitioning of Syria.

According to Reuters, citing Western intelligence sources, American and British Special Forces are building out al-Tanf to encompass a larger role in flushing ISIS out of the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. So a similar enlargement of the U.S. garrison in the south is indeed likely.

At the same time, the Assad regime has also become more publicly critical of Jordan, a key Arab member of the anti-ISIS coalition, owing to reports that the Jordanian army was mobilizing near the Syrian border.

Jordan oversees two large refugee camps inside Syria which host displaced people from areas previously or currently controlled by ISIS, making them a ongoing security concern for the Hashemite kingdom. A safe zone near the Syrian-Jordanian border, backed by Arab and western powers, is clearly viewed as a provocation to Damascus and Tehran.

The tension between the regime and Amman in recent weeks came after unprecedented remarks from Jordanian authorities that Jordan would open its border crossings with Syria if the regime, not the rebels, controlled the borderlands, over fears that Al Qaeda and ISIS jihadists will cross into Jordan.

The de-escalation zones are also believed, by U.S. and opposition sources, to free up time and resources for the regime to advance into the American sphere of influence in ISIS areas.

The Syrian regime and Iran probably calculated that the U.S. would not come to the aid of its rebel allies in al-Tanf, as it untraditionally did on Wednesday.

In fact, al-Talla, the commander of Maghawir al-Thawrah, said, a day before the airstrikes he was told by U.S. forces that his men would be relocated from al-Tanf to another position in Syria to avoid open conflict with pro-Assad elements.

That plan may have now changed.

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** Source Here: With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back ************************************ =>

With latest airstrikes, US signals to Iran: Containment is back was originally posted by A 18 MOA Top News from around

[livinghisword]

United States reports Assad regime carried out mass executions and constructed crematorium at military prison

United States reports Assad regime carried out mass executions and constructed crematorium at military prison

Assad regime reportedly buried thousands after mass executions; Reports come from US intelligence gathering and human rights groups; USA: We believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Sednaya prison.

The Unites States reported on Monday that it has evidence that Syrian President Bashaar al-Assad built a crematorium at a military…

[newscultofficial]

According to the U.S. Syria Built A Crematorium to Get Rid of Bodies

The U.S. State Department shared a source, during a press briefing, claiming that the Syrian regime is responsible for killing at least 50 detainees per day at Saydnaya prison.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/864144259749994496

According to the Washington Post the Syrian government built a crematorium in its Sednaya military prison near Damascus to get rid of the bodies of prisoners it has…

[aceandart]

Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said U.S. officials believe the crematorium could be used to dispose of bodies at a prison where they believe Assad's government authorized the mass hangings of thousands of inmates during Syria's six-year-old civil war.

[...]

Amnesty International reported in February that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison north of Damascus. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in the four years since a popular uprising descended into war, it said.

[steadhammond]

US: Syria government has constructed a crematorium to dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute - Washington Post

Washington Post US: Syria government has constructed a crematorium to dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute Washington Post Officials say at least 50 prisoners a day are executed, some in mass hangings, at the notorious Sednaya military prison outside of Damascus. And the officals accused Russia and Iran of complicity in “these atrocities.” The U.S. released aerial photos ... and more »

[okgooglenews]

US accuses Syria of mass executions and burning bodies - Washington Post

Washington Post US accuses Syria of mass executions and burning bodies Washington Post The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium inside its notorious Sednaya military prison outside Damascus to clandestinely dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility. At least 50 prisoners a day ... State Dept.: Assad using crematorium to hide atrocitiesCNN US accuses Syria of mass executions and burning the bodiesFox News all 34 news articles » http://dlvr.it/P8WwM2

[riyadhvision]

Syria carried out mass hangings at military prison

Syria carried out mass hangings at military prison

The Amnesty report said an average of 20-50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison north of Damascus.

The Syrian government has executed thousands of prisoners in mass hangings and carried out systematic torture at a military jail near Damascus, rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Amnesty said the executions took place between 2011 and 2015, but were…