Talk:Houla:Alleged witnesses for a rebel attack

SANA's Body-Showing Guy
In the SANA English May 27 video, after the ANNA witnesses from Taldou, is one of their own interviewees, starting at 6:47. Actually, at least two men speak, apparently at a morgue or hospital, as bodies were about to be shown (not shown here). Which bodies these are is unclear and of some interest. Some were burnt, others mutilated, left behind for the authorities. Implicitly, they were not seen at the mosque or put in the rebel mass grave. Were they included in the 108 claimed victims, or excluded like the Shumeriyeh victims? Do they include those? The main speaker, apparently someone in charge there, and thus not apparently a direct witness, is shown below: :"The terrorists are from this area, and all the areas around. There was a huge number of them, hundreds. They started to use shells and RPGs. And due to their huge number, they besieged the place as groups. Every group, (included fifty-one?) They began with hitting the houses with guns, machine guns, then with the RPGs, in order to make holes in the houses. They made those hole in order to enter the houses after this. They killed the people in the house and deformed (mutilated) their bodies. And you are going to see some of these deformed bodies. Some bodies have been burned. They burned the house (unclear), with shells, and then moved to another one."
 * Other man: "A man, his brother, and nephew were killed in front of my sister (name)'s. if you had just seen them five minutes ago, they were cousins. Because of God's mercy, the guy was able to run away and hide. They would have killed him and his children. He was carrying and holding his two children. He is a teacher who has been teaching for four years. The Security Council, the United Nations, those observers, what are they doing while shells are hitting us?"

More ANNA witnesses?
A whole new cluster we apparently missed before. See: Pravda Facebook Aangrifan and from there, a video by ANNA news, posted early, May 27. Listed witnesses: Grandmother of the Al-Hula:, Fatima Mustafa, a resident of Tal - Dow, Syed Abdul Wahab, Grandma to UN monitors, A local resident, a local resident, a local woman, apparently eight separate people, presumably no overlap with the others, but possible. Ready to double the list?


 * Ah, nice find. I always thought there must be more somewhere as Musin spoke about a dozen or so in his summary. From skimming nothing really new on the details, but adds variance. And Pravda ran it, so it must be true. ;oP --CE 21:00, 15 October 2012 (EST)


 * That (T.B. Hinchey, no less) clearly won't be our source, hopefully, just where I found it, names, details that might help pin things down. I was preparing to start digesting this, but thought I'd see what others'i nclinations (yours mostly) said first, and work on the Saad Street RPG incident. That's just a nut cluster of weirdness. This batch is good though.On a quick scan, they seem to add a fair amount.Confirmation for the hospital burning, the Ar-Rastan origin, certain family members killed in the fields, possibly an attack at Al-Ghur(?) How to get the content right is the question. Primary video, Arabic to Russian, no subs, some English translations "floating around." Not the best start but a start. --Caustic Logic 21:53, 15 October 2012 (EST)

More footage and details here, SANA English, May 27. About 6:00 are some the ANNA witnesses translated. Some other things in there -apparently footage of the Shumeriyeh victims after all by the SANA people (?), another guy describing the attacks on homes, a miracle survivor (a teacher, saved his two kids too), etc. --Caustic Logic 21:17, 19 October 2012 (EST)

Al Gore Can't Save You
From Hinchey:
 * A local woman: "We are from the villages of Al-Gaunt, which is located next to the Al-Hul. Nine terrorists killed my relatives in the field. The bandits set fire to our houses and we fled into the Al Gore, but there were bandits who kill us, we have a martyr, who was burned alive.

Al Hul is clearly Al-Houla, Taldou. I can't decide what "Al Gaunt" refers to. But Al Gore is probably AlGur Algarbiyah, the good-sized Shia town just southeast of Taldou. I don't know where this alleged portion of the attack happened, but it's apparently on the east side, likely southeast. There's a "cluster" of maybe ten homes behind the Water company. I don't know if these field victims are included in the official (rebel) tallies. All I can think of for people killed out in the open like that in any number is the Al-Kurdi family. --Caustic Logic (talk) 08:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

SANA / ANNA
I read what you wrote about the Rebel Insider and checked the sources. I replaced the "Friends of Syria" blog - which only reprinted the article -, with the source they gave, which is the same from Russian to German to English chain as the interview with the "knowledgable woman".

It seems to me that we are dealing in both cases with the same Interviews, not independent SANA and ANNA. If you check the video which is now source 2 ("RI2"), it doesn't have direct subtitles, but paraphrases what was said. If you check what is now Source 3 ("ANNA1"), this seems to be an actual transcript of the same video, and the russian video which is embedded there is obviously the same setting, just shortened and inserted with the google earth sequences.

In what is now source 4 ("ANNA2"), the subtitles of the youtube you linked are exactly the same as the Russian to German to English chain transcript from ANNA which I added.

I see (at least) two possibilities: CE 02:03, 28 June 2012 (EST)
 * The interviews were done by Marat Murin and shown on Syrian TV (do we know that?) and mentioned in their report
 * The interviews were done by Syrian TV and Murin only translated the content to Russian, which leaves the question if he really was there as he claims


 * Great work - I was sensing cross-over when I saw ANNA's video had the same interview as SANA but not ready to address it yet. I agree on the possibilities, but not sure which is most likely. Either way, the original sources shrink, but the alleged witnesses are the same. --Caustic Logic 08:10, 28 June 2012 (EST)


 * After reading the UN-Report i'm convinced that this set of testimonies is by far the most valuable. They "seem" to be completely unaware of it, and yet it would help them to connect so many dots ... think I fixed the issue well enough - feel free to polish -, now we need the knowledgable woman. Also added the other three from his summary --CE 14:36, 28 June 2012 (EST)


 * Hey... the "knowledgeable woman" on video for ANNA is talking to a sort of Russian-looking guy. I'm not clear on her SANA video, but it's not set-up like the other. In case I forget to follow-up on that, it's mentioned.
 * I can't even find my half-transcript of the video. Will have to come back to it.

Has this English language translation been used in the sources? I cannot see it in the source list: It shares content from Syria News: -- Petri Krohn 23:56, 29 September 2012 (EST)
 * Journalist Marat Musin about Houla Massacre – 3 JUNE 2012
 * Syria: ANNA News Journalist Marat Musin about Houla Massacre – BY VIKTOR REZNOV – MAY 31, 2012
 * It's source number six - which sources the translation process from Russian to English (last link) --CE 02:51, 30 September 2012 (EST)


 * Here is one more ANNA story:
 * Syria: ANNA-News – Another witness of Al-Hula massacre – VIKTOR REZNOV – JUNE 4, 2012
 * -- Petri Krohn 10:48, 30 September 2012 (EST)
 * Source three (last link in the chain) :) --CE 11:15, 30 September 2012 (EST)