Moscow dismisses reports from dodgy 'Syrian Observatory of Human Rights' of Russian strikes on village

RT
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 11:46 UTC

© SANA / Reuters

Deir Ez-Zor, Syria

Russian military has denied media reports of alleged airstrikes on a Syrian village of Ash Sha'fah. The Russian Air Force strikes only terrorist-held targets based on conclusive intelligence, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"No airstrikes by Russian Airspace Forces were conducted in the village of Ash Sha'fah in the province of Deir ez-Zor," the Ministry said on Monday.

Reports of alleged strikes emerged on Sunday, citing the controversial UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The organization claimed that the Russian Air Force hit "residential buildings" in the village of Ash Sha'fah on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, killing at least 53 civilians, many of them children. The Observatory did not provide any proof to back up the report.

The Russian Air Force exclusively targets objects controlled by international terrorist organizations, the Defense Ministry stated. Moreover, they do not conduct strikes in densely populated residential areas, it added.

"The information on such [terrorist-held] objects is checked prior to strikes and is verified in real time through several channels, both from the ground and from the unmanned aerial means of objective control," the Ministry elaborated.

"The reports by the UK-based 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' on the alleged strikes on the Ash Sha'fah village conducted by the Russian planes are yet another fake," it concluded.

SOHR, run by an individual residing in the UK, has been reporting on the Syrian conflict for years, claiming to have a wide network of contacts on the ground. Despite the shady sources and lack of proof, the Observatory's reports have been given widespread coverage in Western media.

Comment: Remember the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights?

What Western media editors conceal from the public however, is that the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" is neither based in Syria nor is it an observer of what actually goes on there. It is essentially one man - Abdul Rahman, aka Rami Abdulrahman, aka Osama Suleiman - a three-term convicted criminal in Syria, based out of a small house in Coventry, England, and his 'team of four activists in Syria' [...]

Apparently all it takes to inform the entire Western media about everything that is happening on the ground in Syria is four people. Four people could, theoretically, provide reasonably objective reports, but only if they were open to receiving information from many sources, including ones supportive of the Syrian government. They might even be able to produce - using objective discernment - reliable statistics of casualties, refugees and terrorists/rebels. But SOHR has consistently reported the 'civil war' from only the perspective of the so-called 'rebels', discounting Syrian government reports out of hand, as well as reports from civilians that reveal rebels' crimes.

That fact alone makes SOHR about as reliable a source of information on the Syrian conflict as the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, who have a vested interest in spinning the war to produce one end: the death or removal of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Rahman, by his own admission, is a member of the 'Syrian opposition' and seeks the ouster of Al Assad, so that clearly removes any semblance of objectivity in his 'reporting'.

But there's more. Rahman, and the SOHR that he runs, has long ago been exposed as a Western propaganda front. As Tony Cartalucci writes in his expose:

"One could not fathom a more unreliable, compromised, biased source of information, yet for the past two years, his "Observatory" has served as the sole source of information for the endless torrent of propaganda emanating from the Western media. Perhaps worst of all, is that the United Nations uses this compromised, absurdly overt source of propaganda as the basis for its various reports."

This man is as far from a 'human rights activist' as anyone can be. His funding comes from the European Union and "an unnamed European state," most likely the UK as he has direct access to former Foreign Minister William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and shares Rahman's enthusiasm for removing Assad from power. The NYT in fact reveals that it was the British government that first relocated Abdul Rahman to Coventry, England after he fled Syria over a decade ago because of his anti-government activities:

"When two associates were arrested in 2000, he fled the country, paying a human trafficker to smuggle him into England. The government resettled him in Coventry, where he decided he liked the slow pace."

Et voila! What was once a criminal with subversive tendencies is now a 'human rights activist' (but really a British intelligence asset). [...]