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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Mr Taha was a candidate in President Bashar al-Assad’s much derided
parliamentary elections, which passed off on Monday with little incident –
or likely effect on the course of the uprising against him.
They are part of a package of reforms decreed by Mr Assad last year, too late
to win over the opposition, which boycotted them. While state television
showed pictures of voters at polling stations, activists and online video
suggested empty streets in many cities.
One complaint was that the new parties and candidates put up were fronts for
the old, single-party regime. Mr Taha, his family admitted, though not
standing for it, was a long-standing member of the Assads’ Ba’ath.
Activists also say he was a senior official with the Air Force, something
confirmed independently to The Daily Telegraph, though police said he was a
businessman.
Apart from that, there is nothing unusual about what happened to him.
The intense shelling of towns has lessened, partly because of the arrival of
United Nations peace monitors and mainly because it had served its purpose.
But in its place Syria
is torn by a classic insurgency, with large areas of territory held only
tenuously by frightened troops who themselves use fear to quell a hostile
population.
The same day he was killed, a man named Moussa Masalla, a 50-year-old father,
died two weeks after being shot in his home in Dera’a’s old town.
According to a resident, troops were raiding for suspects when a random shot
came through the window.
This story could not be verified, but it is believable. Though the old town is
closed to reporters, it was possible to visit with two UN monitors, who
drove through deserted streets where only children dared venture and which
nervous soldiers scanned from heavily sandbagged outposts.
A handful of young men were brave enough to pour out their grievances, and
describe army onslaughts that have left shop fronts and houses pockmarked
with bullet and blast holes.
Dera’a police chief, Maj-Gen Mohammed Adib Assaad, claimed the rebels were “agents
of foreign hands” who had fed demonstrators “food laced with drugs”.
In a sense, such differing interpretations hardly matter now. Officials admit
that even the new city, where Mr Taha was shot yards from the police
station, is too dangerous to venture out after 4pm.
Journalists are also banned from the surrounding countryside. Regime attacks
on local villages have driven thousands to join the rebels and more into
exile.
Mr Taha’s family are a microcosm of a Syria now being asked to achieve
reconciliation. “On the side of the rebels there are no sophisticated
people,” another brother, Maher, said. “They are all criminals and
scum.”
His cousin, Ibrahim al-Fares, though, revealed that a few months before his
house was burned down by rebels he had been arrested by the regime after a
raid on a funeral he had been attending.
“We are between the devil and the deep blue sea,” he said. “For
either side, you have to be for them or against them. There is nowhere else.”
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