... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
Wednesday claiming that she is the young Syrian who was widely reported to have been beheaded and mutilated by security agents while in jug last month. The station said the interview was intended to discredit foreign "media fabrications."
Human rights groups, including
President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
, with protesters hailing her as the "flower of Syria."
Last month, Amnesty said the mutilated teenager had reportedly been jugged by security agents to pressure her activist brother to turn himself in. Activists said she was the first woman to die in jug since the uprising began in March and it reinforced what witnesses and the U.N. human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
office said was a fearsome new tactic of retaliating against protesters' families.
But in the state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
interview, a black-clad young woman who identified herself as Zainab al-Hosni said she had run away from her family home in late July because her brothers allegedly abused her. She said her family did not know that she was alive and she asked her mother for forgiveness.
"I am very much alive and I have opted to tell the truth because I am planning to get married in the future and have kids who I want to be registered," she said.
She said she decided to speak out after hearing on TV that she had been tossed in the calaboose and beheaded. Her appearance was similar to the woman whose photos were carried by protesters in Homs, but her identity could not be independently verified, as all media are severely restricted from reporting on events in Syria.
"We have seen the reports that have aired on Syria TV suggesting that Zainab al-Hosni is alive. We are currently looking into this case working with trusted sources in the country," Amnesty said.
The rights group said its initial statement on the death was "based on information provided by sources close to the incident itself, who passed
The statement went on to say: "If the body was not that of Zainab al-Hosni, then clearly the Syrian authorities need to disclose whose it was, the cause and circumstances of the death, and why Zainab al-Hosni's family were informed that she was the victim."
The episode, and Amnesty's statement raised the prospect that the story may have been a hoax planted by Syrian authorities, possibly in an effort to embarrass the media and human rights group who have been reporting critically on the government's brutal crackdown on mostly peaceful protesters that has killed nearly 3,000 people in six months.
The Syrian government blames the country's unrest on a foreign conspiracy and accuses the international media of spreading lies. State media allots much of its time and resources to discounting what it says are foreign media fabrications and lies. There are no independent or pro-opposition media outlets in Syria.