Syrian President Bashar Assad on Friday rejected a new report of torture and mass killings in a Syrian military prison as a product of a “fake news era.”
Amnesty International released a report that estimated between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners have been killed in a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution” at a prison outside Damascus between December 2011 and December 2015, Yahoo reported. Assad said those reports are false.
“You can forge anything these days,” he said. “We are living in a fake news era.”
The embattled Syrian strongman was confronted with pictures of inmates, taken by a photographer who worked for the Assad regime, that showed the beaten and starved bodies of political protesters in one of the prisons.
Assad said the photos have been “photoshopped” and dismissed a Federal Bureau of Investigation report that stated the photos were real and not doctored.
“If the FBI say something, it’s not evidence for anyone, especially for us,” he said. “The most important thing: If you take these photos to any court in our country, could they convict any criminal regarding this? Could they tell you what this crime is, who committed it? If you don’t have this full picture, you cannot make judgment. It’s just propaganda.”
He added that the United States talking about human rights is hypocritical due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American support for Saudi Arabia.
“The United States is in no position to talk about human rights,” he said.
Assad said any possible cooperation with the Trump administration would have to come after an easing of tensions between the United States and Russia.
Assad warned Trump not to add troops to the fight in Syria and said creating “safe zones” for displaced Syrians inside the country is an unworkable idea. However, he did back Trump’s plan to stop Syrian refugees from coming to the United States.
He said people who have been photographed killing people or holding a machine gun have resurfaced in Western Europe. There may not be many terrorists in Syria, but Assad warned it doesn’t take many to do damage.
“It’s not about significant, because you don’t need a significant number to commit atrocities,” he said.
