Syrian activists on Mar 15 said they were sickened by e-mails which appeared to show Assad and his wife shopping for pop music and luxury items while the country descended into bloodshed. “He was downloading iTunes songs while his army was shelling us. His wife was buying expensive things from Amazon, that makes me feel sick,” an activist Rami in Homs was cited as saying.
A new massacre report and a refugee exodus to Turkey marked the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising on Mar 15. The Syrian Observatory said 23 mutilated corpses were found near Idlib in northwest Syria that was seized by regime forces this week. The victims had been blindfolded and handcuffed before being shot dead and the bodies dumped outside Idlib, it said, in an apparent repeat of a “massacre” of dozens of women and children in the flash point city of Homs last weekend.
Bahrain has decided to close its embassy in Damascus and to recall its diplomats. The government advised Bahrainis who were still in Syria to “be cautious and to immediately leave this country.” European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton wants the bloc’s 27 governments to pull all its ambassadors out of Syria going into talks among foreign ministers next week.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that Syria’s leader is acting like a murderer and should be sent to the International Criminal Court. The Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby says the Syrian regime’s killing of civilians amounts to crimes against humanity and is calling for an international inquiry. He said it would not be ethical or moral to allow those behind the killings in the cities of Homs and Idlib to get away with their crime.