Click here to view the embedded video.

Violence over the burning of copies of the Quran by NATO troops at a military base in Afghanistan has spread, prompting the US president to issue an apology and the Afghan government to demand trial and punishment for those responsible.

As protests over the incident continued for a third day on Thursday, the death toll of Afghan demonstrators rose to 12.

In a separate incident, two US soldiers were killed when an “individual wearing the Afghan army uniform” opened fire on them at a military base in Khogyani in eastern Nangarhar province, Mohammad Hassan, the district’s governor, told the AFP news agency.

“As the protesters approached the American base here, an ANA [Afghan] soldier in the base opened fire on American soldiers, killing two soldiers,” Hassan said.

Barack Obama’s written apology came shortly after Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, said a US officer was responsible for the Quran incident.

The US embassy in Kabul was locked down on Wednesday and remained closed on Thursday.

The embassy said on Twitter that “peaceable assembly is an American value/tradition; we join President Karzai in urging restraint and nonviolence today”.

Obama’s ‘deep regret’

Karzai’s office said it received a letter in which Obama expressed his “deep regret for the reported incident” and offered his “sincere apologies”.

According to the statement, Obama wrote: “The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible”.

However, in what could further intensify the unrest, the Taliban issued a statement calling on the Afghan people to “target the military bases of invader forces, their military convoys and their invader bases”.

The statement, issued via email by a spokesman named Zabiullah Mujahid, called on Afghans to give NATO troops “a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Quran again”.

Despite telling the public to “not stop” at protests, Mujahid said the calls against foreign military forces would not affect the anti-government group’s negotiations with US officials in Doha.

“We condemn the desecration of the Holy Quran in the strongest terms, but this issue will not affect this process in Qatar,” he said.

The disturbances began after reports earlier in the week of the discovery by local labourers of charred copies of the Quran as they collected rubbish at the US-run Bagram base in Parwan province.

Protests continued on Thursday in the Kart-e-Naw and Bagrami districts of Kabul, with several hundred turning out with banners reading “Long live Islam, long live the Quran”.

In Laghman province, over 600 people marched into the provincial capital of Mihtarlam chanting “Death to America”.

Afghan sources said the protests in Laghman had turned violent and had been growing since the early hours of the morning.

A police official speaking to the AFP news agency said thousands of protesters besieged the headquarters of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the provincial capital.

“People had come from all over Laghman. They attacked the PRT, they climbed up the walls, they set fire to something there, I think a container,” the police official said.

Protests in Jalalabad

In the country’s east, 300 students took to the streets of Jalalabad, according to reports.

North of Jalalabad, fresh protests rocked the city of Asadadab in the province of Kunar, while there were also reports of protests in Khost province.

Protests spread to the north as people took the streets of Faryab, where hundreds gathered in the provincial capital, and Badakhshan provinces.

The protests on Wednesday caused seven deaths and left 32 people injured, according to Afghan government sources.

Before Obama issued his apology, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, had issued his own, in addition to backing the call for “swift and decisive action to investigate this matter” by the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen.

“These actions do not represent the views of the United States military. We honour and respect the religious practices of the Afghan people, without exception,” Panetta said.

Aljazeera

A source close to Nazarov said he remained in critical condition after being shot three or four times.

Nazarov has been living in Sweden since he was granted political asylum in 2006.

With tens of thousands of followers and admirers, he is considered one of the most powerful opponents of the regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Shortly after arriving in Sweden in March 2006, Nazarov broke eight years of silence in an interview with RFE/RL correspondent Alisher Sidikov.

He and his family had just received refugee status from the United Nations after living in hiding in Kazakhstan since 1998.

Nazarov was one of the most popular imams in Central Asia in the early 1990s, making him a target of Karimov’s government.

Nazarov, who was 47 years old at the time of the interview, left Tashkent for Kazakhstan after Uzbek authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of religious extremism and terrorism.

The United Nations concluded that Nazarov was a victim of political persecution by the Uzbek authorities and needed to be protected.

From exile, Nazarov became one of the leading supporters of the secular opposition and democratic change in Uzbekistan.

Calling For Peaceful Change

He told RFE/RL that the Karimov government hadn’t had a “fair attitude” toward Islam since the Soviet days, when “people in power used to put their will over the wishes of the people.”

“Now in Uzbekistan we see the same situation. They don’t want to give broad opportunities to the people,” he added. “While, in fact, Allah wants people to live freely and have lots of opportunities, [officials] wanted to rule using communist methods.”

Nazarov said he responded to pressure from the government by telling officials that times had changed and he “didn’t want to carry out their orders.”

That made him a terrorist in the eyes of Tashkent, which also accused him of leading fundamentalist Wahhabis in Uzbekistan.

Nazarov denied that charge. “What we are preaching is in line with Allah’s words and his prophet’s interpretation,” he told RFE/RL.

“But those who do not want us accuse us in many ways. It is ridiculous, but for the [Uzbek government], human rights defenders are the terrorists; journalists are the terrorists. In this situation, one should never react when they call you the same as well.

“I do not support a change of government with arms. We believe things can get better through peaceful means.”

Nazarov also refuted allegations that he and his followers were seeking the establishment of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. His wish, he said, was to see freedom of religion so that Muslims and Christians and other religions could all benefit.

“We want a society where human rights are respected and freedom of religion is guaranteed,” he said.

RFE

Commenting on today’s Conference, Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain said: “It was only two years ago, in Lancaster House, that the UK government hosted a conference that was supposedly to bring ‘stability’ to a war torn and impoverished Muslim country, which they justified on the grounds of a ‘terrorist’ threat to the UK’. That was the London Afghanistan conference. Yet, till today, Western intervention continues to bring death and instability to Afghanistan. Today, again in Lancaster House, the UK promises to help bring ‘stability’ to Somalia as it hosts the London Somalia conference“.

“Little will be said about how continued external interventions have sabotaged stability in Somalia. There have been up to twenty US attacks in Somalia since 2007, there was the disastrous ‘operation restore hope’ and the US and UK supported Ethiopia’s attack in 2006 on the Islamic Courts Union, shattering Somalia’s first period of peace and stability in decades.”

“The US and UK governments helped destabilise Somalia by supporting a foreign invasion, leading to the death and killings of Muslims, because they could not accept that a strategically located land – overlooking vital maritime routes, possessing untapped resources and the second longest coastline in Africa – could be outside their control.”

“As capitalist states, the common interest the British and American governments have in the developing world is in subjugating the people of the region in the name of economic and political gain– including through direct military interventions like in the days of the British empire.”

“For the past twenty years, all attempts to impose solutions on Somalia – from Western capitals – have failed. Liberating the region from Western colonialism can only come about by the people implementing an Islamic State that will put people before profits. Historically it is the Islamic system that brought peace and stability to all races in the region and liberated the people from poverty and oppression. Today, the Muslim world is going through a truly historic revolution against despots and dictators who have been the Guardians of Western colonialism that epitomised the 20th century. Today’s conference is another desperate example of Britain trying to retain her grip on the Muslim world. We call on all our brothers and sisters in Somalia to reject these attempts and work towards establishing the Islamic Caliphate that will bring a truly accountable government and a system that will return the resources of the region to the people and put the horn of Africa on a path of development and prosperity.”

[Ends]

The Syria Observatory for Human Rights says that at least 16 civilians were killed in Homs’ Baba Amr neighborhood, three of them children. The BBC reportsat least 30 dead in Homs, which has emerged as a stronghold for both armed and peaceful resistance to Mr. Assad’s continued rule. Among the dead in Baba Amr was Rami al-Sayyed, a young Syrian who’d devoted himself since July to filming fighting and protest marches. As Syriapioneer on Youtube, he uploaded 831 videos between then and earlier today.

The next to last video on the account posted early today, too graphic to share here, was of Mr. Sayyed sitting beside a man in tracksuit who’d been mutilated beyond recognition. Sayyed was cut down by an infantrymen a few hours later, and the final video on the account is of his body being prepared for burial, uploaded by his brother.

From Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, comes an indication why the death toll has been steadily climbing in Homs. He says a video from Homs that shows the fragments of a mortar the struck a building there is proof that Assad has deployed the Russian-made “Tulip” weapons system against the town, which fires the largest mortar round in any military’s arsenal. The tank-like vehicle that serves as the firing platform can lob 240mm mortar rounds up to 20 kilometers away, and they carry over 70 pounds of explosives. The largest mortar used by the US, in contrast, is 160mm.

Syria has another Russian-made system for firing rounds that size, the towed M240, and it’s possible that’s being used to fire the rounds instead of the Tulip.

The Tulip was designed for use against dug in positions from a standoff distance. But its lethality has been used in the past to bring devastation to civilian neighborhoods, most famously by the Russians during the siege of the Chechen capital of Grozny over a decade ago, where thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble. The use of such weapons in dense urban environments is a war crime.

The are ongoing international efforts to convince Assad to stand down. But the increasing lethality of the weapons used by his army, and the mounting civilian death toll, paint the picture of a man who has determined to win this fight whatever the cost in lives.

The first video below is of the 240mm fragments that hit Homs, and the second is a Russian video showing how the weapons system works. The Videos can be found on site linked below.

CS Monitor

Pickles is also keen to encourage a national community music day on 9 September in which communities can come together through choral singing in shopping centres, steel drum bands in park bandstands and piano recitals in schools.

The Big Lunch is described as “encouraging people to interact by sitting down and having lunch with their neighbours, helping to build stronger communities and develop the local resources to overcome tensions and conflicts”.

More than 2.4 million people took part in a 2011 Big Lunch which was initiated by the Eden Project and Pickles hopes to bring even more people together on Sunday 3 June this year – the same weekend as the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations.

“Britain is a place where the vast majority of people from all walks of life get on well with each other. Events such as the royal wedding and the Big Lunch show that community spirit is thriving,” said Pickles on Tuesday. “I welcome the contribution of everyone but those who advocate separate lives are wrong. It is time to concentrate on the things that unite the British people.”

The communities secretary is also reported to be pressing ahead with hisplan for a curry college to train British people from all backgrounds to become chefs and wants to develop it further with “cordon bleu” scholarships.

The integration strategy document promises renewed efforts to “outflank extremism”, including a national group to help local communities deal with protests by the English Defence League, Muslims Against Crusades and other extreme groups, and a working group on anti-Muslim hate crime.

But it also adopts a minimalist approach to the official encouragement of “community cohesion” saying that in future government will only act exceptionally.

Instead of community cohesion grants only small amounts of official funding will be made available to “kick-start action” with special “integration projects” now seen as too often proving irrelevant to daily lives or unsustainable.

There is also an emphasis on providing additional funding for English language classes only for those who are not in work and unable to afford fees themselves, such as women with children living in closed communities.

But the delayed 26-page strategy, which only applies to England, does not live up to its billing in some newspapers as a major break with Labour’s policies in this area. There is no wholesale rejection of multiculturalism and no mention of dropping Whitehall diversity targets.

The strategy does say that in the past integration challenges have been met with legal rights and obligations around equalities, discrimination and hate crime and that this approach has not solved the problem and may, in some cases, have exacerbated it by singling out specific groups for special treatment.

It adds that ministers expect mainstream public services to make the most impact on integration rather than any specific new official integration activity.

They will move away from a “Whitehall-dictated approach” to encouraging collective local action such as the Big Lunch and the community music day instead.

The communities department has been pressing ahead with non-controversial elements such as the national citizen service, which will bring together 30,000 young people of different backgrounds this year, and a Year of Service, which is a series of special volunteering days throughout the diamond jubilee.

The race equality thinktank Runnymede described the new strategy as a “dangerous and ill-advised reversion to assimilationist policy”. Its director, Dr Rob Berkeley, said it subsumed all the differences of ethnicity and heritage into a majoritarian “mainstream”.

“The secretary of state appears to have completely misunderstood the problems we face in building a successful multi-ethnic society, and the solutions proposed as a result simply miss the point. This government has sought to make fairness its catchword; this strategy does nothing to turn such rhetoric into reality,” he said.

Sunder Katwala of British Future said the risk in the strategy was that while the government spoke clearly about integration, it was retreating to doing less about it. “The local matters and so does personal responsibility, but an argument that national government will act ‘only exceptionally’ is too hands-off and hollows out what government needs to do to break down barriers. Integration is a two-way street,” he said.

“There is good evidence that well-designed projects to support integration – for example in the English language – are effective and cost-effective.

“As the government rightly sets out why integration matters, it must not duck its own role in helping to achieve it.”

The Guardian

The issue has been rising up the agenda of David Cameron’s National Security Council in recent months, reflecting anxiety in the west about piracy, but also the ambitions of some leaders within al-Shabaab, the clan-based movement that is fighting against Somalia’s western-backed transitional government.

Though the “war games” remain on the drawing board for now, the disclosure that they have been under serious scrutiny shows the depth of unease about the situation within the British government, which is hosting an international conference on Somalia in London starting on Thursday.

According to sources, the international coalition that has been spearheading the fight against the pirates drew up contingency plans in the summer of 2010, and again last year, for what was termed “over the beach” air strikes against Somali camps.

The UK has also considered plans for attacking targets in places where al-Shabaab and the pirates appear to co-exist, particularly in southern Somalia.

But though the military advice is that any attacks would be relatively straightforward, and may only involve small numbers of heavily-armed helicopters flown from warships, planners have also flagged the likelihood that civilians could be caught up in any fighting.

That has been one of the prime considerations militating against pre-emptive military action, though sources said that situation could change.

“We don’t have the assets in place,” said one senior official in Whitehall. “That does not mean we could not get them in the air quickly. You have got to think long and hard. You have got to be absolutely sure [about the targets].”

The official said that a short, sharp strike might “interdict” potential terrorists and pirates, but would not be a solution to either problem in the long term.

Another source added: “There was no political will on this to begin with, but that has been changing. We know where the camps are, where they set up and where they launch from.”

Building up Somalia’s own security forces and coast guard would be far preferable, but they are far too weak at the moment to be considered for such operations, the source said.

It is believed the British, Dutch, French and Americans would be the most likely to support military action, if the need arose.

The US is already taking great interest in Somalia and has begun missile strikes from unmanned drones against members of al-Shabaab, which is said to have growing links with al-Qaida affiliates in other countries, and is attempting to “export” violence to other countries in Africa.

The group claimed responsibility for twin bombings in Uganda two years ago that killed 74 people as they were watching coverage of the World Cup in South Africa. In recent months statements said to have come from the group’s leaders have proclaimed greater links with al-Qaida’s goals of global jihad.

Up to 200 foreigners, including 40 Britons, are know to have travelled to Somalia in the past six years seeking al-Shabaab’s training camps, in the same way that extremists went to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s.

Some have been caught and are facing trial in the region, but intelligence agencies say it is only a matter of time before one of them attempts to bring terror back to their homeland.

With words that seemed to echo the reasons for invading Afghanistan, Cameron recently said that Somalia was a “failed state that directly threatens British interests”.

The head of the British military, General Sir David Richards, also appeared to hint at the potential for military action in a speech shortly before Christmas. “Treating the causes of instability and terrorism at source is better and cheaper than dealing with the consequences, as Somalia’s piracy demonstrates,” he said.

Thursday’s conference, which will be attended by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will focus on the international efforts that will be needed to drag Somalia out of its present chaos and how to extend the transitional government’s influence beyond Mogadishu.

A new intelligence centre, based in the Seychelles, to help co-ordinate the fight against Somali pirates was announced on Tuesday by William Hague. The foreign secretary said it would “help the international community to target the kingpins of piracy and ensure piracy does not pay.”

During the conference, a new international “stability fund” is expected to be agreed, with the UK giving £20m to some of Somalia’s most deprived districts. The money will help to set up markets, reopen schools and hospitals, as well as securing water supplies.

It is expected that the UK will also announce new support for Somalis who have been forced to flee their homes, with a package of healthcare, food and sanitation assistance for 150,000 refugees in Kenya.

In Ethiopia, 100,000 refugees also will be helped over the next three years.

Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, said: “Over the last year I’ve met Somalis in camps in Mogadishu and border areas who have known nothing but war, hunger and extreme poverty.

“Britain provided thousands of tonnes of food, water and medicine to help meet people’s basic needs and that help will continue.

“But this conference gives us a chance to do much more by breaking the cycle of instability and agree a practical way forward that will improve things in the longer term.”

The Guardian

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hundreds of Afghans have staged angry protests at two sites in and around the capital Kabul, angered by reports that NATO troops had set fire to copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

General John Allen, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, offered his apology and ordered an investigation into the incident as protesters shouting “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar” [God is great] besieged the US-run airbase in Bagram on Tuesday, firing slingshots and petrol bombs.

Guards at the base, about 60Km north of Kabul, responded by firing rubber bullets from a watchtower, an AFP news agency photographer said.

Another protest by about 500 people broke out in the Pul-e-Charkhi district of Kabul, not far from major NATO bases on the Jalalabad road, Ashamat Estanakzai, an Afghan police spokesman, told AFP.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from the city of Herat, said: “We don’t know if the religious literature was burned, but we know that it was due to be burned because waste at the base is burned generally.

“We do know it was being thrown out. That is what’s caused the protests outside Bagram, about 800-1,000 people were protesting there.

Investigation launched

Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan, said an investigation had been launched into the issue and preliminary information showed that Quran copies had not been burned.

“What actually happened was that in the course of last night, considerable amount of religious material, including Qurans, was set for disposal by ISAF personel,” he told Al Jazeera from Kabul.

“Fortunately for all of us, local workers recognised the type of material and intervened. Actually the disposal process was stopped in time but it led to protests over the day. As far as we know, and the investigations are ongoing, they were not burned. But we have to wait for the results.”

Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the NATO-led force, says ‘we have to wait’ for investigation results

Announcing the investigation into the reports of Quran burning, Allen, the US commander, said: “I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the President of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” he said.

Allen’s remarkably candid statement, apparently aimed at damage limitation after similar incidents led to violence and attacks on foreigners, was played repeatedly on Afghan television.

“We are thoroughly investigating the incident and are taking steps to ensure this does not ever happen again,” Allen said.

Allegations that NATO troops working inside the base had set fire to copies of the Quran were first reported by a senior government official.

“It is surprising that after all these years American and NATO forces have been here in Afghanistan and all the lessons they have learned about how important it is to treat Islamic material with due respect, this sort of thing is still happening,” our correspondent said.

“That is what causes so much offence here in Afghanistan and adds fuel to the anti-American and anti-foreigner feelings.”

Similar protests have in the past turned violent in Afghanistan, an extremely devout Islamic nation where an insult to the religion carries the death penalty.

Some 10 people were killed and dozens of others were injured during days of unrest caused last April over the burning of a copy of the Quran by an American pastor, Terry Jones, in Florida.

Aljazeera

In Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, it is not just forbidden to speak, demonstrate and protest: it is also forbidden both to give medical treatment, and to receive treatment yourself. Since the beginning of the uprising, the regime has been waging a merciless war against any individual or institution capable of bringing medical aid to the victims of repression. “It’s very dangerous to be a doctor or a pharmacist,” a pharmacist from the Baba Amro neighbourhood of Homs tells me. Medical personnel are imprisoned – like the nurse in the nearby district of al-Qusayr, arrested the day after he showed me around his hidden emergency-care centre, its carpets covered with plastic tarpaulins to protect them from blood – or killed, like Abdur Rahim Amir, the only doctor in that centre, murdered in cold blood in November by military security, while he sought to treat civilians wounded during the army’s assault on Rastan to the north. Or tortured.

In Baba Amro, a nurse from the Homs National Hospital, imprisoned in September, describes the tortures he was subjected to by miming them: he was beaten with a club, blindfolded, whipped, suffered electric shocks, and hanged from the wall by a single wrist, on tiptoe, for four or five hours – a common practice that has its own name, ash-shabah. “I was lucky, they didn’t treat me so badly,” he insists. “They didn’t break my bones.” Sometimes, the regime’s forces just insult them. A Red Crescent nurse, in her ambulance, was stopped at a checkpoint: “We shoot them, and you save them!” the soldiers berated them.

The two city hospitals, the civilian (called the “National”) and the military one, are under the thumb of the security forces, and their rooms and basements have been turned into torture chambers. The private clinics, last resort for the wounded of the insurrection, are subjected to permanent assault. In one, in the heart of the old city, two nurses show me the impact of bullets in the windows, walls and beds, fired by the army from the nearby citadel. Aside from these two nurses, the clinic is empty. “We can only accept emergency cases and we don’t keep anyone for more than a few hours. The security forces come here regularly and arrest everyone they find. The doctors have had to sign a pledge not to take care of demonstrators.”

As they speak, a bullet slaps into the room next to ours. Everyone laughs. “Ever since the Free Syrian Army (FSA) established itself in the neighbourhood,” continues one of the nurses, “the wounded can be brought here.” The rebel army also transports doctors for operations, when it’s possible. Five days earlier, the clinic received a man with his belly torn open: a first surgeon was able to operate, but needed a specialist to complete the procedure. The neighbourhood, however, was sealed off, making it impossible to bring the specialist in and impossible to transfer the patient to another hospital. “In the end he died,” concludes the nurse.

Abu Hamzeh, a highly trained surgeon, tries to care for the wounded who arrive daily at an emergency first aid point in the city. He is so desperate about the lack of resources – his centre has no anaesthetics, no medical imaging equipment, he can’t operate on anyone, just bandage them and give them saline drips – that he wants to give up medicine and take up arms. “I’m useless here,” he mutters bitterly in front of a man with his abdomen perforated by a sniper bullet, “completely useless.” When the uprising first began, Abu Hamzeh was working at the Homs military hospital, and he witnessed the tortures inflicted on wounded demonstrators, sometimes even by nurses or doctors, whose names he carefully recorded. When the head doctor of the hospital tried to forbid such practices, they simply became more discreet. “One day, I treated a patient in the emergency room. The next day he was sent to the CT room for a brain trauma he didn’t have the previous day. That’s how I discovered that they did things to him at night. After two days the patient died from his brain trauma. He would not have died from the injuries I treated the first day.”

Horrified, Abu Hamzeh managed to procure a camera-pen in Beirut, and secretly recorded, with the help of a nurse, four short videos in a post-operative care room. In the clips you can see five patients, completely or nearly naked beneath the sheets, blindfolded, one ankle chained to the bed. The doctor’s hand uncovers their bodies: two of them bear large fresh red marks on the torso, the result of flogging. Lying on a table are the torture instruments: two supple whips, rubber straps cut out from tyres and reinforced with duct tape, and an electric cable with a plug on one end and a clamp on the other, to be attached to the fingers, feet or penis. One of the injured men groans incessantly. “They had blocked their catheters,” Abu Hamzeh exclaims. “When I came in they begged for something to drink. I opened the catheters and changed the urine bags, which were full, but two of the patients went into a coma because of kidney failure. When I changed their bandages, I noticed gangrene on one of the patients; I told this to the orthopaedic section but wasn’t able to follow up. Three days later I heard they had cut his leg off above the knee.”

Abu Hamzeh, who recently resigned his position in order to join the opposition, was quickly sidelined. But the practices he describes have only intensified over the past months. In Baba Amro, we are taken to meet R, a wounded man whose leg has been amputated, and who was just released from the military hospital. In late December a shell fell in his street, killing five of his neighbours and relatives. In the little video they show me, you can see R bundled into a vehicle, his leg half-torn off, just held in place by a hastily tied scarf. The first private clinic where he was brought was overwhelmed with wounded, and they tried to transfer him to another one, along with his 28-year-old nephew, whose left arm was attached by nothing more than a few scraps of flesh. But the ambulance transporting them was intercepted at a security forces checkpoint, where the two wounded men were arrested, placed in an armoured vehicle, and taken to the military hospital. There, without receiving any medical attention, handcuffed to their beds and blindfolded, they were tortured for eight hours. “They hit me with food trays, on my head and body. They tied ropes to my wounded leg and pulled in all directions. They did many other things to me, but I don’t remember them.”

The men torturing him weren’t even trying to get information, they just insulted their victims: “Ah, you want freedom, well here’s your freedom!” His nephew died from the torture; finally, R was transferred to the operating room for surgery. Afterwards, he was imprisoned, without any post-operative follow-up: his leg got infected, and six days later it was summarily amputated by a military doctor. I am shown a picture of him upon his release: his skin sallow, his cheeks sunk, skeletal, but softly glad to be alive. “They killed me, back there,” he concludes, his eyes shining. “I should never have come out alive.”

Such practices are in no way isolated cases, individual initiatives fuelled by sadism or overzealousness, outside of any control. On the contrary, they are codified and regulated by a set of procedures far older than the current uprising, as Abu Salim, a military doctor who served for two years in the mukhabarat, the Department of Military Intelligence, before defecting to the opposition to run a makeshift clinic in Homs, testifies: “What is the mission of a mukhabarat medical doctor?” he calmly asks as my tape recorder runs. “I will explain it to you. Firstly: to keep alive the people subjected to torture so that they can be interrogated for as long as possible. Secondly: in case the person being interrogated loses consciousness, to attend to him so that the interrogation can continue. Thirdly: to supervise the use of psychotropic drugs during the interrogation. We used chlorpromazine [an anti-psychotic drug prescribed, usually, for schizophrenia], valium, and rubbing alcohol – for instance, by pouring a litre into the nose, or else by subcutaneous injection. Fourthly: if the person being tortured has reached his threshold of resistance and is in danger of death, the doctor can request his hospitalisation. However, the doctor cannot make the decision: he must write a report and the officer in charge of the interrogation then decides whether or not to grant the transfer. Before the revolution, almost everyone was transferred; now, it’s only the important prisoners. The others are left to die.”

Guardian