Talk:Houla:Alleged witnesses for a government/Shabiha attack

CE: I'm starting to get the formatting down, and one thing I can point out here - Source 7, HRW witnesses? The family match is younger woman, older woman, and infant together. The BBC had names for the two, and an age for the infant (one month), not interviewed or listed, but "here with me," IIRC. Oweis has "They entered our homes ... men wearing fatigues herding us like sheep in the room and started spraying bullets at us," said an apparently injured woman in a video released by activists. My father died and my brother, my mother's only son. Seven sisters were killed," the woman said, lying next to another injured woman and near a baby with a chest wound." Did someone shoot or stab the one-month old infant? Or is the age fudged down?

Anyway, slow talk pages so I may as well... HRW's Abdul Razaks are a different three -boy, mother, old lady. At least, I think... will let you fix it if warranted. --Caustic Logic 15:04, 1 July 2012 (EST)
 * Getting not much done today, including checking what you say about the matches. "citing HRW witnesses, not clear if original content" was more a note to self, as they mention them somewhere in the article. Will remove that from the source description. CE 03:38, 2 July 2012 (EST)

More thoughts-Rasha said to BBC: "My aunt and her two daughters - one of them was only injured and she's here with me - she is one month old, the other one died. We were all in the house. I survived with my mother and the one-month-old girl and my sister. They shot at us but we survived." So that could be her mom, her aunt, or her sister in the video. A lot of survivors. The baby, perhaps, doesn't need to be listed as a witness. Survivor, yes. Unable to speak, it's worth noting... Also, she specifies guests at their home "our neighbour and her three kids." Sounds like "Fatima." Also maybe --Caustic Logic 15:13, 1 July 2012 (EST)

SPIEGEL interviews
- Maryam will need her own page now. That's some face time, and she's a new star witness. Any thoughts, when formed or before, drop here.
 * went back to the NPR feature with a snippet of her interview - seems to be the same voice like in the spiegel interview. NPR contains only very rudimenatry information, consistent with what she says to spiegel. Interesting remarks on the slogans the "shabiha" were shouting: "We had never heard that before"
 * After summarizing, there are indeed contradictions on the motive compared to her NPR statement, and it looks like the family could indeed be seen as government supporters, while the sunni reason seems to make no sense. We really need to find out how the MP relates to them - SANA is unrechable once more, wanted to check their initial report. --CE 04:08, 3 August 2012 (EST)
 * Could have read your al-Sayed summary on the victims page instead ... would have also shown me that the "Adil" part below is not news ... good work there. :) --CE 06:20, 3 August 2012 (EST)
 * Did you notice that Ali is named "Ali Adil Sayyid" in the article? Seems we were right that this is a subfamily named Adil/Adel like the matching names in the victims list indicated. Therefore the MP guy is "the uncle of his uncle's wife", while he might be closer to Maryam and her family. --CE 03:05, 3 August 2012 (EST)

Two Thomson visits
I'd like to have your opinion before I add it to the page, but i'm quite convinced now that Thomson visited Taldou two times - the first time on Sunday, together with the Columbian team, and then a second time on Wednesday, when he interviewed the witnesses. As i've written on the forum, Catalina Gomez describes in this article how they were stopped on main road on Sunday, and her team didn't make it to the city center but instead visited the Al-Sayed house and talked to the army people. I wondered if I got the auto-translate correctly that both teams didn't make it, and how she later mentions that Thomson returned on Wednesday to "finish the job" while her team was scheduled to leave the country and couldn't join. I just checked and Thomson's city-visit video AND article are both from Wednesday, the 30th, and if you read between the lines in his article and follow the link to the other article, it's clear that he is talking about the day after Kofi Annan's meeting with Assad, which took place on Tuesday. That explains why he hears no shooting and gets welcomed by a crowd in "rebel-held" Taldou while on Sunday he and Gomez are seen while heavy fighting is still going on. Thoughts? --CE 23:01, 1 October 2012 (EST)


 * Yeah, I was wondering why they'd wait three days to post that. Second village. There's also his visit to Foulah, later yet (same day?). Minor point. But I think the visit will need re-dated. --Caustic Logic 08:57, 2 October 2012 (EST)


 * Yup, found his article about the first visit, they did not make it to the city center that day. It may seem minor but we'll have to figure out who-controlled-what-when and knowing that pics like f.e. with the "horse" at the roundabout are from May 30, not May 27, can be an important detail. Will specify the description of his visit on the "shabiha witness" page. btw, news about the "Shabiha" came to Thomson in that early article from "the FSA command in Rastan". --CE 22:06, 2 October 2012 (EST)


 * Oh, and in a later article he names "his" 15-year old wounded girl as "Aya", not "Noura" - but they seem to match rather well. Embedded there also a longer video of his May 30 visit which i'd seen before, doesn't show anything we haven't covered. Remarkable though that they boast that Thomson is "the only journalist" who made it to the town - had they mentioned Gomez, like she mentioned him, we would have found her earlier. Arrogant pricks - nobody cares about Columbians, do they? ;o) --CE 22:29, 2 October 2012 (EST)

Government "counteroffensive"
On the UN video from May 26th Main Street looks empty when the observers arrive. It has been taken over by Syrian Arab Army forces when the observers leave in the afternoon. These troops must have "collected" somewhere. They must have driven into town in APCs and pickups. Someone must have seen them.

It is feasible that some of the testimony of Shabiha and Army assembling and entering town in fact refers to this troop movement well after the massacre. When did we first hear the "Shabiha killed them" narrative? Early rebel stories claimed all were killed by artillery fire. The ghostly "Shabiha" twist only appeared one or two days later – after the SAA had briefly revisited Main Street. -- Petri Krohn 02:43, 5 October 2012 (EST)