Video- West backs militants in Syria despite crimes: Iran MP

An Iranian lawmaker has censured Western countries and their regional allies for supporting militants in Syria despite growing revelations about their crimes in the Arab country.

“Despite frequent revelations about the crimes by terrorists in Syria, the Western countries and their regional allies persist in providing the terrorists with military, logistic, training and financial support,” said Mohammad Reza Mohseni Sani, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s Majlis.

The MP’s remarks came after a video was posted online on Sunday showing a foreign-backed militant in Syria cutting out some of the organs of a Syrian soldier and biting into one. In an interview with Time magazine conducted later via Skype on Tuesday, Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, confirmed the authenticity of the video.

“Such incidents show the climax of hostilities committed by arrogant powers through their mercenaries in the region,” Mohseni Sani said.

The terrorists, he said, have resorted to psychological warfare in a bid to cover up their failures against the Syrian Army.

He criticized the so-called advocates of human rights for not openly condemning the crimes, which, he stressed, revealed their double standards toward basic human rights.

Highlighting that it was not the first time such inhumane and brutal crimes had been committed by militants in Syria, Mohseni Sani said, “Two years on since the Damascus crisis started, the identity of the terrorist elements fighting against the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad government has been disclosed several times, but human rights circles and the UN have, in practice, shown no reaction to that.”

Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian security forces, have been killed in the unrest.

The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants fighting in Syria are foreign nationals.