West must not arm organ-eaters in Syria, Putin says

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Western states against providing weapons to foreign-backed militants who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying plans to give them arms contradict basic human values.

Putin made the remarks during a news conference in London on Sunday after holding talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron on the Syrian crisis.

“It is barely worth it (supplying arms) to support people who not only kill their enemies but open up their bodies and eat their internal organs in front of the public and the cameras,” Putin said.

“Do you want to supply these people with arms? In that case this hardly has anything to do with the humanitarian values which have for centuries been preached in Europe,” he added. “At least in Russia we cannot imagine this.”

Putin was referring to video footage surfaced on the Internet last month of a militant eating what appeared to be the heart of a dead Syrian soldier.

In an interview with Time magazine on May 14, the cannibal militant, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, confirmed that the video is real and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldier’s lung. Human Rights Watch said it was a war crime.

Putin also said that Moscow had abided by “rules and norms” when providing weapons to the Syrian government, and that the process was “in accordance with international law”.

“We are not breaching any rules and norms and we call on all our partners to act in the same fashion,” he said.

The British prime minister, who was standing with Putin, also spoke to reporters, saying there are differences between Britain and Russia over the Syrian issue.

“There are very big differences between the analysis we have of what happened in Syria and who is to blame but where there is common ground is that we both see a humanitarian catastrophe,” Cameron said.

“What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognize that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them,” he said.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of government forces, have been killed.

Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants.

In addition, several international human rights organizations say the militants operating in Syria have committed war crimes.