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Video Said to Show Execution by Syrian Rebels Stirs Debate

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

As my colleague Damien Cave reported, Syrian rebels on Tuesday said they had captured and later executed several members of a prominent Aleppo family with close ties to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. That act - captured on video and circulated widely - appeared to constitute a war crime, human rights activists said on Wednesday.

While the details remained murky, the killings appeared to stem from the pitched battles that have raged for days in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria and the country's commercial hub. Rebels accused members of the Barri family, a large Sunni clan well known for suppressing opposition to Mr. Assad, of killing 15 antigovernment fighters.

Video posted by antigovernment activists showed more than a dozen men, some with bloodied faces and torn clothing, who are said to be members or associates of the clan. Held in what appeared to be the room of a school, they were made to give their names and accused of being pro-government militiamen known as shabiha. The man sitting in the center and said to be a leader of the group said his name was Ali Zein El Abidin Barri, also known by the nickname Zeino.

Another video, posted to YouTube on Tuesday, appeared to show several of the men from the clip above, including an older man bleeding from his face and wearing only his black underwear, being led by rebels with assault rifles out on to an Aleppo street where a crowd had formed. In the extremely graphic and disturbing video, the men, prisoners of the rebel fighters, were then forced to sit along the wall of a local school, decorated with a painted mural of Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and other cartoon characters kicking a soccer ball.

“The Free Syrian Army forever,” the crowd chanted. “Stepping on Assad's head.”

Then, seemingly without warning, someone in the group of armed rebels fired a single shot. That set off a hail of bullets that continued for nearly 45 seconds. Many in crowd, including the videographer, backed away from the ad hoc firing squad. As a cloud of dust cleared, the lifeless bodies of the captured men could be seen. An Al Jazeera reporter in Aleppo identified one of the dead as a local politician, Zeino al-Barri.

The disturbing clip attracted tens of thousands of views by Wednesday morning and sparked a vigorous debate online, with some antigovernment activists objecting to the executions, while some welcomed it. Others justified the executions as the unfortunate consequence of the government brutal response to the 17-month-old uprising.

“Intentionally killing anyone, even a shabiha, once he is outside of combat is a war crime, regardless of how horrible the person may have been,” said Nadim Houry, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, in a telephone interview. “As the opposition gains more territory, it is important to hold them to the same standard that we would apply to all sides.”

Mr. Houry was quick to point out that Human Rights Watch had previously documented scores of extrajudicial killings by the Syrian government during the conflict in an April report, as well as in previous reports of human rights abuses by the rebels. None of those acts of brutality justified executions without judicial process, he said.

But after making a similar point about war crimes on Twitter, Mr. Houry found himself in a debate with several activists.

Shakeeb al-Jabri, a Syrian activist i n Beirut, Lebanon, said such expectations of the rebel fighters were idealistic.

“The video is disturbing but the supporting comments are really shocking,” Wissam Tarif of the human rights group, Avaaz, wrote on Facebook. “Few condemned and most commentators approved and congratulated. This is not what Syrians or at least most Syrians are fighting for.”

The circumstances leading to the capture and execution of the Barri clan members were not clear, but it appeared to follow a street battle on Tuesday that flared up after what antigovernment activists said was a truce between fighters from the two groups.

As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, wrote on his Angry Arab blog of the large size of the Barri clan, which, by some estimates, numbers in the thousands.

Quoting an unnamed Syria observer, Mr. AbuKhalil wrote that the family was thought to have ties to criminal gangs and guns: “Their elders (they include an MP) were known for attacking demonstrations in their areas and beating protesters, as well as recruiting and financing thugs. But these are, of course, a small section of a very large family.” Rebels had secured an agreement from the Barri family to remain neutral in the current fighting in Aleppo, the observer said, but the agreement broke down on Tuesday.

A man said to be a rebel leader in the fight against the Barri clan gave an explanation for the killings in a video poste d on Tuesday, saying a battalion of rebel fighters had been unexpectedly attacked by a large number of armed shabiha, killing 15 rebels. He said that after a long firefight, roughly 50 of the pro-government fighters were captured and a small number were killed for their role in the rebel deaths.

Mona Mahmood, a Guardian reporter, spoke by phone on Wednesday to a man said to represent the armed group, who echoed reports that a deal between the Barri clan and rebel forces had broken down on Tuesday, leading to the clash and the executions.

“We were in a truce with the Barri clan, which are shabiha clan,” the man, identified as Basheer al-Haji, told The Guardian. “We were attacking one of the police stations in the city and Barri clan began shooting against us from behind.” He said they captured 50 people and immediately held a kind of “field trial” for them.

“We have judges and lawyers who are in the opposition,” he said. “They found that se ven of the Barri clan were involved in killing and they decided to execute them. Others are kept for trial after the collapse of the regime.”

Underscoring the decentralized nature of the rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, a battalion in Homs posted video earlier this week proclaiming that they would adhere to international law in the treatment of detainees.

“We are committed as best we can to applying the articles and subarticles of the Geneva Convention No. 4 that details the treatment of prisoners of war,” read a man who was identified as a fighter with the Farouq Brigade in Homs, while sitting in front of the rebel flag.

“We are committed to treating them in a humane way, and we tell everyone that we are revolting against a barbarous regime that always tortured and treated detainees and arrestees in brutal ways that led to the death of many,” he said. “That is why we can never adopt the behavior of that very entity we a re revolting against.”