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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syria hands over British doctor's body to Red Thingy
2013-12-22
BEIRUT -- The Syrian government on Yesterday delivered the body of a British doctor who died in a Syrian jail to the International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross. Abbas Khan, 32, was found dead in his prison cell this week, days before he was due to be released.

The Syrian government said he committed suicide, a scenario his family rejected, saying he had been overjoyed at being freed after 13 months in prison. The Red Thingy Cross handed his body over to the British embassy in Beirut in preparation for transferring it to London, Lebanese security officials said.

Khan, an orthopaedic surgeon from south London and a member of the London-based charity Human Aid UK, went to Syria to offer his services in the rebel-held northern province of Aleppo. Syria's state-run news agency, gave his cause of death as "asphyxia caused by hanging," but Khan's mother, Fatima Khan, accused the Syrian government of killing him.
Both statements are consistent...
"They (the Syrian government) take all of their anger with the British government by killing a minor, a minor person who did not kill an ant in his life," she said in an ITV News interview this week. "They killed him," she said. "... How can you kill somebody when he is helpless, in handcuffs?"

Khan first went to Turkey in November 2012 to treat refugees coming over the Syrian border. He then crossed the border for about 48 hours to work in a hospital in Aleppo before being detained at a Syrian government checkpoint November 22, 2012. Human Rights Watch accused the Syrian regime of killing hundreds of people in airstrikes in Aleppo.

"Government forces have really been wreaking disaster on Aleppo in the last month, killing men, women and children alike," said Ole Solvang, a senior emergencies researcher at the New York-based rights group. "The Syrian Air Force is either criminally incompetent, doesn't care whether it kills scores of civilians or deliberately targets civilian areas."

Its report was issued seven days after Syrian regime warplanes launched attacks against rebel-held areas in Aleppo.
Posted by:Steve White

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