MIDDLE EAST Human Rights Watch outraged by video showing Syrian rebel commander Abu Sakkar cutting out government soldier's heart and eating it

By John Hall

A graphic video has emerged of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a  soldier’s chest and biting into it.

Described by Human Rights Watch as “emblematic” of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, the amateur footage was posted on the internet yesterday - sparking outrage among opposition figures, as well as supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.

Human Rights Watch said the video shows Abu Sakkar – the prominent founder of rebel group Farouq Brigade, which originated in Homs.

In the clip, Sakkar cuts into the chest of the dead soldier before ripping out his heart and liver and declaring: “I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog”. To off-screen cheers and chants of “Allahu akbar [God is Great]”, the man then bites into the heart.

The Syrian conflict started with peaceful protests in March 2011, but when these were suppressed it gradually turned into an increasingly sectarian civil war which, according to one opposition monitoring group, has cost more than 80,000 lives.

Majority Sunni Muslims lead the revolt, while Assad - whose family have ruled for over four decades - gets his core support from his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said that he had seen an original, unedited copy of the video and that Abu Sakkar's identity had been confirmed by rebel sources in Homs and by images of him in other videos wearing the same black jacket as in the latest clip and with the same rings on his fingers.

“The mutilation of the bodies of enemies is a war crime. But the even more serious issue is the very rapid descent into sectarian rhetoric and violence,” said Bouckaert.

He said that in the unedited version of the film, Abu Sakkar instructs his men to “slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them”, before biting into the heart.

Abu Sakkar has been seen in previous videos firing rockets at Lebanese Shi'ite villages on the border and posing with the body of a soldier purportedly from the Lebanese Shi'ite militant Hezbollah group, which is helping Assad's forces.

The video cannot be independently verified. Access in Syria is restricted by the government and security constraints.

Source: Independet