‘Heart eater’ ready to face trial if Assad does

BEIRUT: The Syrian rebel commander who rose to international notoriety for footage of him cutting out and eating the organ of a slain soldier said he was willing to face trial for his actions if President Bashar Assad was also sent to court.
A video released yesterday showed the commander in Syria’s central Homs province, known as Abu Sakkar, praying in a field and taking questions from a cameraman.
“I am ready to be held accountable for my actions, on condition that Bashar and his shabbiha (militias) are tried for crimes they committed against our women and children,” he said. “I send this message to the world: If the bloodshed in Syria does not stop, every Syrian will become Abu Sakkar.”
A video of Abu Sakkar, a founder of the well known Farouq Battalion in Homs, went viral earlier this week. It showed him cutting into the torso of a dead soldier and taking a bite out of one of his organs.
Asked by the unseen interviewer why he mutilated the soldier’s body, Abu Sakkar said the man’s phone contained video clips of him raping women, burning bodies and cutting off the limbs of captives.
Abu Sakkar has been seen in previous videos firing rockets at Lebanese Shiite villages on the border and posing with the body of a soldier purportedly from the Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah group, which is helping Assad’s forces.