U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has denounced an Internet video showing the mutilation of a Syrian soldier's body by a rebel fighter, and urged the armed Syrian Opposition to stop such gross crimes.
"The video that has just emerged from Syria, apparently showing a rebel leader cutting out and biting the heart of a dead soldier, depicts a truly atrocious act," Pillay said in Geneva on Tuesday, noting that it was not yet possible to fully authenticate the footage.
"Mutilating or desecrating corpses during a conflict is a war crime. I urge the armed Opposition groups in Syria to do everything in their power to halt such gross crimes," she said.
The U.N. rights chief also called for an investigation of the incident, along with other alleged very serious violations by Opposition fighters, including acts of torture and a succession of apparent summary executions and extra-judicial killings.
"I have repeatedly called for the case of Syria to be referred by the Security Council to the International Criminal Court, so that legal proceedings can begin against people believed to be responsible for serious international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, irrespective of whether they are on the side of the Government or are in Opposition to it," Pillay said.
The video shows a rebel fighter cutting the heart and liver out of the soldier's body and putting the heart into his mouth. The figure in the video also uses sectarian language to insult Alawites, who are members of a Shia sect.
Alawites, who constitute 12 percent of the Syrian population. back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who himself is an Alawite. Notably, the country's rebel movement is dominated by Sunnis.
After the gruesome Internet video emerged, Maj-Gen. Salim Idriss, Chief of Staff for the Supreme Military Council of the Syrian Opposition, told the TIME Magazine that "such violence is unacceptable, and no soldier under the Council's command would be allowed to get away with such actions."
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has identified the rebel fighter in the video as Abu Sakkar, a commander of the Syrian opposition "Independent Omar al-Farouq" brigade. The rights group said the Omar al-Farouq Brigade was implicated in the indiscriminate shelling of the Lebanese Shia villages of al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed in April.
HRW believes that Abu Sakkar had participated in that cross-border attack. Besides, the rebel had earlier appeared in another video with what he claimed were bodies of killed Hezbollah fighters in the town of al-Qusayr.
An estimated 70,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since an armed rebellion against the Assad regime began in Syria in March 2011. The ongoing civil war has forced about 1.4 million Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring countries, with 4.25 million more displaced internally.
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