Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem made his address to the UN General Assembly today, and naturally much of the speech centered on the ongoing civil war, pushing the idea that the harsh violence is the result of rebels who “eat human hearts.”
What Moallem is mentioning is a real thing, as a video in May showed a rebel commander eating the heart of a slain Alawite, and promising to do so to the rest of the nation’s religious minority. The video was loudly defended by some rebel factions, though it was disavowed by others.
During the address, Moallem also faulted the UN chemical weapons probe, accusing the United States and France of blocking its completion to avoid implicating the rebels in the attack.
Moallem is just the latest to complain about the UN probe, which stopped short of attempting to assign any blame for the attack and simply confirmed that a chemical attack occurred on August 21. The US has said it was “obviously” the Assad government’s doing, while Russia has insisted it had evidence that it was the rebels who launched the strike. The UN tried to avoid controversy by splitting the difference and just leaving responsibility out of the report.