Syria committed crimes against humanity: UN report (Reuters)

GENEVA (Reuters) ? A United Nations commission of inquiry on Syria said on Monday Syrian military and security forces had committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture and rape and the government of President Bashar al-Assad bore responsibility.

The panel, which interviewed 223 victims and witnesses including defectors, called on Syria to halt "gross human rights violations," release prisoners rounded up in mass arrests and allow media, aid workers and rights monitors access to the country.

Syria is "responsible for wrongful acts, including crimes against humanity, committed by members of its military and security forces as documented in the present report," the three-member panel said in a 39-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

It catalogues executions, torture, rapes including of children, arbitrary detentions and abductions carried out since March by Syrian forces quashing pro-democracy demonstrations while enjoying "systemic impunity" for their crimes, it said.

"The commission therefore believes that orders to shoot and otherwise mistreat civilians originated from policies and directives issued at the highest levels of the armed forces and the government," said the team, led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro.

More than 3,500 people have been killed in the violence, according to the United Nations, while activists say that up to 30,000 have been arrested, many kept in open-air stadiums.

The U.N. Security Council stopped short of taking action against Syria when China and Russia vetoed a resolution in October. After continuing international criticism of Assad's handling of the crisis, the Arab League approved sanctions against Syria on Sunday.

"The international community must act. More than ever it has a duty to stop the suffering of the civilian population," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement after the publication of the U.N. report.

In a written response included in the U.N. report, Syria's mission to the United Nations said Syria was standing against U.S. "policies of occupation" and blamed the violence on "terrorist operations carried out by armed outlaws who are terrorizing our citizens" and trying to "divide the country along sectarian lines and incite civil war."

CHILDREN TORTURED TO DEATH

Syria refused access to the U.N. investigators, saying it was carrying out its own inquiry. But the U.N. report pointed the finger squarely at the government of Assad.

"In the Syrian Arab Republic, the high toll of dead and injured is the result of the excessive use of force by state forces in many regions," it said.

It called for protecting the Syrian population and for an international embargo on arms sales to Syria.

There had been "isolated instances" of violence by demonstrators, but the "majority of civilians were killed in the context of peaceful demonstrations," it said.

Syrian forces have used snipers and tanks to suppress the uprising and drawn up "black lists" with names of people wanted by the authorities and sought at checkpoints, it said.

"Defectors from the military and security forces told the commission that they had received orders to shoot at unarmed protesters without warning," the report said.

Some soldiers who disobeyed these orders were shot by the security forces or by army snipers, it said.

"A number of cases was documented of injured people who were taken to military hospitals, where they were beaten and tortured during interrogation," it said. "Children were also tortured, some to death."

WORSHIP ASSAD INSTEAD OF GOD

Military and security forces used torture including electric shock and sexual torture, mainly on men and boys in custody, as a "tool to instill fear," the U.N. panel said.

"Testimonies were received from several men who stated that they had been anally raped with batons and that they had witnessed the rape of boys," it said.

"Detainees were also subjected to psychological torture, including sexual threats against them and their families, and by being forced to worship President Al Assad instead of their god,"" it said.

The inquiry, set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council last August to probe allegations of crimes against humanity, also called on the 47-member state forum to establish a special rapporteur or investigator on Syria.

The Geneva-based rights forum is expected to hold another special session on Syria, its third, on Friday, at the request of the European Union and other states, according to diplomats and U.N. sources.

Activist groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said in a letter to United Nations member states last week that if the inquiry found that crimes under international law had been committed, they should urge the Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The U.N. panel's report, specifically the paragraph on the Security Council, was "disappointing in its lack of teeth concerning international justice," Jeremie Smith of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Tom Miles and Jon Hemming)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/un/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111128/wl_nm/us_syria_un

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Islamist party takes most seats in Morocco poll (AP)

RABAT, Morocco ? An Islamist Party is on track to become the largest party in Morocco's new parliament with a dominant showing after two-thirds of the seats were announced by the Interior Ministry on Saturday.

The Justice and Development Party has taken 80 seats, almost twice as many as the next most successful party, with 282 seats announced out of the 395 up for grabs in the nationwide vote a day earlier.

Barring a massive upset, the PJD ? known by its French initials ? will be the largest party in the new parliament and charged with forming a new government ? making another Islamist victory in an election brought about by the Arab Spring.

Last month, Tunisia's Ennahda Party took 40 percent of the seats in elections in the country that started a wave of pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East after its people overthrew their long-serving president.

Egypt is set to hold elections of its own on Monday that are also expected to be dominated by Islamist parties, lending increasing weight to the view that religious movements have been some of the biggest benefactors of the Arab Spring.

Like the rest of the region, Morocco was swept by pro-democracy protests decrying lack of freedoms and widespread corruption, which the king attempted to defuse over the summer by ordering the constitution modified to grant more powers to the Parliament and prime minister and then holding elections a year earlier.

Activists, however, have called the moves insincere and clamored for a boycott.

Complete results, including those of 90 seats reserved for women and youth and the 23 remaining regular seats, will be announced Sunday. PJD is expected to ultimately win up to 110 seats.

The Islamists' biggest rivals in Morocco's elections is a coalition of eight liberal, pro-government parties led by Finance Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, which has amassed more than 111 seats, but under the new constitution the party with the most seats gets first crack at forming a new government.

The Islamists must now find coalition partners, with their natural allies being the "Democratic Bloc," an alliance of the right-of-center Istiqlal, or Independence Party, the left-of-center Union of Socialist Progressive Forces and the former communist party ? venerable political parties that have been eclipsed by Mezouar's so-called Group of Eight.

"We are ready to work with the PJD on the condition that all the parties of the bloc participate in this government," affirmed Mohammed al-Khalifa, a member of the Istiqlal Party's political bureau.

Ali Bouabid, a member of the USFP's leadership, agreed that an alliance was certainly possible and must be discussed.

"If the bloc allies with the PJD it must be on the basis of a strong political program," he said. Such an alliance would be 165 seats strong and a majority of the results announced so far.

In recent years Morocco's Islamists have cultivated an image as honest outsiders battling corruption, and seeking to improve services and increase employment, rather than focusing on moral issues such as whether women wear the Islamic headscarf or the sale of alcohol.

Morocco, a close U.S. ally and popular European tourist destination suffers from high unemployment and widespread poverty.

With dozens of parties running and a complex system of proportional representation, Morocco's parliaments are typically divided up between many parties each with no more than a few dozen seats, requiring complex coalitions that are then dominated by the king.

The government announced a 45-percent turnout in Friday's contest, slightly more than legislative elections in 2007, but still less than local elections in 2009 and the summer's constitutional referendum.

There are almost 13.5 million registered voters in this North African kingdom of 32 million, though it is estimated that there are many more people of voting age not registered, something an European observer team noted in their report that otherwise praised the election as free and fair.

"The completeness of these lists are a key element of the electoral process and the delegation regrets that the current system, according to some, does not make it easy for citizens to register. In effect, a considerable part of the some 20 million Moroccans of election age are not on the lists," the Council of Europe said in a statement.

As in 2007, a significant number of the ballots cast were invalid, in some cases because voters marked them incorrectly, but in others it was clearly a form of protest with the entire ballot or all the parties crossed out.

The U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, which sent an election observer mission to Morocco, estimated that 20 percent of the ballots they saw during counting were invalid, suggesting a "citizen interest in further and deeper political reforms," according to its statement.

"The vigor with which some people expressed their protests on their ballot form was noted by many of our observers in all parts of the country," said Bob Rae, a member of the delegation and the leader of Canada's Liberal Party.

(This version corrects that final results expected Sunday.)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111126/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_morocco_elections

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