SYRIEN - En sammanställning av konflikten

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle reiterated Berlin’s opposition to a possible foreign military intervention in Syria, focusing on the fact that such measures might engulf the entire Middle East.

During a meeting in Doha on 4 June 2012 with the emir of Qatar, Mr. Westerwelle stated that Kofi Annan’s peace plan offers the best solution for the situation created in Syria. He also expressed Berlin’s disapproval of the position of some Western and Arab governments, including Qatar itself, promoting military intervention in Syria.

"We must avoid a conflagration that could set the whole region on fire. Considering the highly complex and dangerous situation in Syria, we must not create the wrong expectations, pretending that we could bring about a quick solution with a military intervention," he said before his five-day tour of the Middle East.

We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land.

At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover.

Another dead-end.

There was no option but to drive back out onto the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.

Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we re-appeared.

I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.

That conviction only strengthened half an hour later when our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side-street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead.

The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town.

Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus.

Please, do not for one me moment believe that my experience with the rebels in al Qusair was a one-off.

This morning I received the following tweet:

“@alextomo I read your piece “set up to be shot in no mans land”, I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.”

That was from Nawaf al Thani, who is a human rights lawyer and a member of the Arab League Observer mission to Syria earlier this year.

It has to make you wonder who else has had this experience when attempting to find out what is going on in rebel-held Syria.

On April 3, 2012, the Berlin magazine Der Spiegel published a report sent by their correspondent in Beirut, Onrika Potts, who interviewed one of the mercenaries who served in Syria with the last name of Hussein, who had fled that country to Tripoli, and whose "work" consisted of "massacring" civilians and military personnel of the Syrian people who had been abducted by armed groups.

Hussein acknowledged that after the first murder he committed with a knife, he began to join the gang called the Funeral, whose mission was named after the action of the gang in charge of interrogation and kidnapping civilians and military and torturing them. He also said that a third gang had the job of burying those killed in mass graves, "something very similar to what they did in Libya."

He also reported that "20 percent of the hostages were killed with knives." According to what the journalist wrote, Potts, the nickname of Hussein, said he had beheaded "only four people and killed many others with a PKC type machine gun."

Another of these terrible confessions was someone in charge of the terrorist, Abu Rami Rafik Hussein, "who admitted that since last summer, his gang shot and killed 150 people, and that the Funeral gang where he worked with another Hussein, killed between 200 and 250 people since the beginning of the actions in Syria."

The members of terrorist groups interviewed by the co-head of Der Spiegel, acknowledged having started their criminal acts "from August of last year, trying to instill terror and create chaos in peaceful Syrian cities, armed and financed by Arab and Western countries."

in Syria with the last name of Hussein, who had fled that country to Tripoli, and whose "work" consisted of "massacring" civilians and military personnel

Hussein can barely remember the first time he executed someone. It was probably in a cemetery in the evening, or at night; he can't recall exactly. It was definitely mid-October of last year, and the man was Shiite, for sure. He had confessed to killing women -- decent women, whose husbands and sons had protested against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime. So the rebels had decided that the man, a soldier in the Syrian army, deserved to die, too.

There are probably many reasons for that development. Hussein can rattle off several of them. "There are no longer any laws in Syria," he says. "Soldiers or thugs hired by the regime kill men, maim children and rape our women. If we don't do it, nobody will hold these perpetrators to account."

"When we catch regime supporters, they are brought before a court martial," they say. The commander of the rebels in Homs, Abu Mohammed, presides over the court. He is assisted by Abu Hussein, the head of the coordinating committee. "Sometimes even more men act as a jury," says Hussein. The interrogation brigade reports on the confessions of the accused. Often the suspects even had videos on their cell phones that showed atrocities being perpetrated against insurgents, the men say. "In that situation, their guilt is established quickly."

He dismisses any doubts about whether these people were really all guilty and whether they received a fair trial. "We make great efforts to investigate thoroughly," Abu Rami says. "Sometimes we acquit people, too."

The members of terrorist groups interviewed by the co-head of Der Spiegel, acknowledged having started their criminal acts "from August of last year, trying to instill terror and create chaos in peaceful Syrian cities, armed and financed by Arab and Western countries."

Claims of a huge massacre in the tiny farming village of Qubair took a turn toward the confusing today, when a journalist who went to the village found considerable blood strewn all over the place, but no bodies.

The journalist said residents from nearby villages told him that an Alawite militia had attacked the town and massacred everybody with knives, saying they “stabbed everybody and everything,” including the livestock.

But what happened to the bodies of the estimated 80 killed? The residents say that people in a “pickup truck” loaded all the corpses up and drove them off to an unknown site, odd behavior for a group of kill-crazy militia members.