Syria Denies US Allegation They Are Cremating Prisoners

Says US Is Lying to Justify Intervention

Yesterday’s allegations from the US State Department that Syria had built a large crematorium outside of Damascus and was using it to mass cremate the detainees they also claim Syria to be mass executing came with a conspicuous lack of evidence for any of the assertions, boiling down to satellite images of the outside of the putative crematorium.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry has now issued a statement insisting the US allegations, which again weren’t based on any evidence, weren’t true at all, both denying that they are mass executing prisoners and that they are cremating this huge number of bodies being alleged.

State Department officials making the allegations yesterday conceded that the timing was primarily related to the recent visit of Russia’s Foreign Minister to the US, and followed it by claiming Russia must be “endorsing” the killings that they offered no evidence were happening in the first place.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry presented the “American lies” as having been produced primarily to justify continued “aggression and interventionism” within Syria, likening the narrative to the script of a Hollywood movie, a narrative intended to move US action along.

That is, of course, roughly in keeping with the way the US has justified myriad of its military operations. Though it’s impossible to rule out the State Department’s accusations being true, it’s difficult to treat them as credible in the absence supporting evidence.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.