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What will the Syrian investigation in the Houla massacre conclude?

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What will the Syrian investigation in the Houla massacre conclude?

Asked by: Super Userkruijs in Politics » Middle East
Settled on 06/01/2012 20:50 Settled by Super Userkruijs
Winning option:rrorists/opposition/rebels are blamed As my colleagues Steven Lee Myers and J. David Goodman report, on Thursday, Syria’s foreign ministry announced the results of a three-day investigation into the massacre of more than 100 people, almost half of them children, in the village of Houla last week.

Although survivors of the rampage told journalists, human rights investigators and United Nations observers this week that the slaughter was carried out by pro-government militiamen from neighboring villages, who moved in after shelling by the Syrian Army, the commission of inquiry appointed by President Bashar al-Assad found the Syrian government completely blameless.

Endorsing a theory put forward by Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. on Wednesday, General Suleiman claimed the killings were staged by the opposition to incite a sectarian civil war, and provide a pretext “to bring foreign military intervention against the country in any form and way.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/syrian-government-investigates-massacre-and-finds-syrian-government-blameless/

Predictions
Terrorists/opposition/rebels are blamed
27.8% →
Pro government thugs are blamed
9.2% →
Government forces are blamed
5.1% →
No or ambivalent conclusion
No or ambivalent conclusion
36.7% →
No report published by the end of Thursday
No report published by the end of Thursday
21.2% →

Background

The Syrian government on Sunday rejected claims that it had carried out a massacre that killed more than 90 villagers, including at least 32 children, and the United Nations Security Council was expected to meet in the afternoon to discuss the killings, which its top officials have sharply denounced.

“We unequivocally deny the responsibility of government forces for the massacre,” Jihad Makdissi, the spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference in Damascus, the capital. He reiterated the standard government line that the deaths were caused by a terrorist attack, and he said he regretted that the United Nations and other governments seemed to have accepted the opposition’s version of events.

Mr. Makdissi said a judicial military committee had been set up to investigate and report back in three days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/world/middleeast/syria-denies-responsibility-in-brutal-attack.html?_r=1&hp

Find similar: syria, houla, Bashar al-Assad, un security council

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   Super Userkruijs

Martin Griffiths, the deputy commander of the UN’s observer mission to Syria, said both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) command in Rastan and civilian eyewitnesses in Houla itself had said the same thing:

Shelling of the town began at about 12.30pm after prayers and lasted about two hours. Then, from around 3pm, groups of armed civilian militias — known as the Shabiha — began moving house to house and the killings, using knives and firearms, began. According to both sources speaking independently, it went on for hours, family by family. Both groups say the killings continued until about 2am on Saturday.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9293588/Syria-Houla-massacre-they-moved-from-family-to-family-killing-them-one-by-one.html

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