DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Syria’s interior ministry said on Monday that it would investigate footage showing men in military fatigues shooting an unarmed man in scrubs at point-blank range in the main hospital in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida last month.
Syria’s interior ministry said in a written statement that it had seen the “disturbing video” and “condemns and denounces this act in the strongest terms”.
The statement said the ministry tasked the deputy minister for security affairs “to directly supervise the investigation to ensure the perpetrators are identified and arrested as quickly as possible”.
The security camera footage, verified by Reuters and by a doctor who witnessed the incident as being filmed inside Sweida National Hospital, shows four men in green military fatigues and one man in a black uniform with the words “Interior Ministry” printed on his back.
In the footage, the five security forces stand in front of a group of about two dozen people in hospital scrubs, kneeling or squatting on the floor. One man in scrubs is standing.
Two of the men in fatigues grab the standing man and slap him, as if trying to force him to sit. The man in scrubs resists and pulls one of the attackers in a headlock and onto the floor.
The other armed men intervene to release their colleague. The man in scrubs is then shot twice while on the floor, first with a rifle by one of the uniformed men and then with a pistol by a second uniformed man.
In the footage, which has no sound, the fighters appear to address the rest of the group, then drag the motionless man away by his feet, leaving a streak of blood on the hospital floor.
The Syrian defence ministry did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters on the incident.
The footage is the latest to emerge of execution-style killings in Sweida, where sectarian bloodshed last month left more than 1,000 people dead, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. A fact-finding committee has been set up to investigate reports of abuses.
WITNESS
Reuters was able to confirm the location of the footage from the floor, doors and walls, which matched media coverage of the hospital lobby. The date on the CCTV footage says the incident took place at about 3:16 p.m. on July 16.
Syrian armed forces were deployed to Sweida city on July 15 to quell clashes between Bedouin tribes and Druze fighters, but the violence worsened after they entered.
A senior doctor in the hospital’s orthopaedic department who was in the hospital at the time and witnessed the incident said the security forces had stormed the hospital on July 16.
The doctor identified the slain man as Muhammad Bahsas, a civil engineer who had come to the hospital to volunteer.
The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said one of the security personnel who had shot Bahsas told the rest of the group: “Anyone who speaks up to us will end up like him.”
The doctor said the armed men then combed through the hospital for hours, searching for weapons and repeatedly calling the medical staff and volunteers “pigs”. The security forces kept medical staff confined to hospital rooms overnight and left the hospital by the morning, the doctor said.
(Reporting by Eleanor Whalley in London and Feras Dalatey; Editing by Alison Williams)
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