Newshour in Syria: The man who collected bodies for the Assad regime
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Newshour reports from Syria again, as the country tries to emerge from the ruin of civil war and dictatorship. Tim Franks has met a man whose job under Bashar al-Assad was to collect bodies from a military hospital: "the hardest part to see was how they were tortured". Also in the programme: Canadians elected Mark Carney to see off Donald Trump's ambition to annex Canada - today they met at the White House; and Germany has a new Chancellor, after a rocky start. (Photo: Fighters inspect the site of a mass grave from the rule of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, according to residents, after the ousting of al-Assad, in Najha, Syria, December 17, 2024. Reuters/Ammar Awad)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service, coming to live from London with me, Sean Lay. |
| 0:09.8 | Tim Franks is in Syria. In just over 10 minutes' time, we'll also hear about another remarkable White House news conference, |
| 0:17.0 | this time involving President Trump and the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, |
| 0:20.4 | which also included a big, unexpected foreign policy announcement. this time involving President Trump and the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, |
| 0:24.7 | which also included a big, unexpected foreign policy announcement. |
| 0:27.7 | But before all that, let's hear from Tim in Syria. |
| 0:32.1 | We're here in the Syrian capital for our second day of broadcasting from a country trying to emerge from the ruin of civil war |
| 0:35.9 | and the chokehold of dictatorship under the assets. The question we've been trying to emerge from the ruin of civil war and the chokehold of dictatorship under the |
| 0:38.8 | assets. |
| 0:39.8 | The question we've been trying to get answers to while we're here is whether the rebels |
| 0:43.6 | turned rulers can take this country towards stability, recovery, openness and democracy. |
| 0:49.4 | As you'll hear, there's some deep scepticism, including from those who call themselves |
| 0:53.4 | well-wishers, |
| 0:54.5 | about whether the one-time Sunni fundamentalist militants now in charge are really one-time, |
| 1:00.2 | or whether they're just a different shade of authoritarian. |
| 1:03.6 | One of the most constant refrains we've heard from Syrians while we've been here |
| 1:07.2 | is that just scraping by remains tough. |
| 1:10.2 | The economy is enfeebled. 14 years of war |
| 1:13.2 | have seemed to that, along with the legacy of the previous corrupt and ravenous regime. |
| 1:18.8 | Add to that, the continuing burden of sanctions. The UK has gone furthest in lifting those. |
| 1:24.6 | The European Union has also suspended some. But the US wants to keep |
| 1:28.3 | leverage on the new Islamist rulers, despite what's supposed to be an exemption for basic humanitarian |
... |
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