A hospital worker has provided video evidence showing medical staff torturing patients under their care in Homs, Syria.
The footage of the Homs military hospital shows wards full of wounded men, blindfolded and shackled to their beds.
The apparent instruments of torture, including a rubber whip and an electrical cable, lie openly on a table in one of the wards.
The whistleblower, ‘Abu Hamzeh’, claimed many patients were whipped and beaten in their beds.
“I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs,’ They twist the feet until the leg breaks. They perform operations without anaesthetics. I saw them slamming detainees’ heads against walls. They shackle the patients to beds. They deny them water,” The Daily Mail quoted Hamzeh, as saying.
He has also provided the names of all those he claimed had worked hand-in-glove with Syrian soldiers and the feared Mukhabarat Secret Police.
This evidence raises the question of where hundreds of injured civilians from the district of Baba Amr in Homs will be taken once the Red Cross finally negotiates their evacuation.
“This is the first time we have video evidence to corroborate these claims. The new evidence is horrific. Hospitals should be safe places for anyone who needs medical attention and treatment, but it seems that wounded people in Syria have no safe place to go,” an Cilina Nasser, the author of the Amnesty International report said.