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Syria’s Assad laments, defends downing of Turkish jet

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times –

BEIRUT — Amid escalating cross-border tensions, Syrian President Bashar Assad has told a Turkish newspaper that he regrets “100 percent” Syria’s downing of a Turkish aircraft last month and said ground gunners assumed the jet was an Israeli warplane.

“In the case of a Turkish plane I am saying 100 percent, ‘If only this had not happened,’” Assad told the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet in an interview published Tuesday. “In this kind of climate when a plane approaches like this, it is naturally considered hostile.”

But Assad offered no apology and did not retreat from Syria’s account that the aircraft was hit well within domestic airspace — a version disputed by the Turks, who say the plane was shot down in international airspace moments after having inadvertently strayed into Syrian skies.

The president also vowed to avoid a direct confrontation with Syria’s former ally.

“We will not allow relations between the two countries to turn into a shooting war that will harm us both,” Assad said, according to a partial transcript in English published by the BBC.

Most analysts say neither nation wants a full-scale war to break out, but leaders of the two countries want to appear resolute.

Though Assad is widely perceived as determined to hold on to power, he told the Turkish newspaper he would be willing to leave office if Syrians voted him out.

“If the people so choose they can send me packing,” Assad said, though independent observers say elections yield predetermined results in autocratically ruled Syria.

Assad said Syrian military believed that the doomed aircraft was Israeli, since Israeli warplanes had used a similar route on a previous occasion. However, Turkey says intercepted radio communications make it clear that Syrian authorities knew the jet was Turkish.

Syrian batteries shot down the F-4 Phantom jet June 22 off the coast of Latakia province. The two pilots are presumed dead.

Assad’s appearance came as a human rights organization released a new report accusing his government of torturing prisoners.

The regime is operating detention centers where guards and interrogators torment Syrian prisoners by ripping out their fingernails, burning them with battery acid, inflicting electric shock and other methods of torture, Human Rights Watch said in the report.

The rights group said it had documented torture at 27 detention sites across Syria since the uprising against the government began in March 2011, based on interviews with more than 200 witnesses. It named the officials who allegedly run the detention centers, mapped out the sites’ locations and provided bleak sketches to illustrate the kinds of torture described by Syrians who had escaped.

“We are putting those responsible on notice that they will have to answer for these horrific crimes,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Syria has previously rejected accusations of human rights abuses and argued that it is defending itself against armed terrorists funded from abroad, pointing to kidnappings and other abuses at the hands of the rebels, which Human Rights Watch has also reported. The Syrian government did not immediately respond to the new allegations, The Associated Press reported.

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