Syria: Inside the Secret Revolution Panorama

This is a story of incredible bravery hidden from the outside

world. Where 3,000 civilians and hundreds

of troops have been killed. And where children have been

targeted. I could hear people's anguish and the cries, it was

constant. It's the bloodiest upridesing of the Arab Spring.

situation on the ground, it's crimes against humanity. After

Egypt and Libya, will Syria's President be next to fall? Or will

the world continue to stand by? Tonight, pictures never seen before

and testimonies, from inside the This is Deraa in southern Syria,

home to nearly 80,000 people, it used to be a bustling commercial

centre. Today, it's a Ghost Town. There are soldiers on the streets.

They've set up their barracks in a Young men from Deraa are filming

this secretly, risking their lives. Hundreds of people have been killed

here. Thousands are missing. For months now, activists have been

using tiny cameras, ingeniously hidden in cars and clothes.

TRANSLATION: We're putting the camera into these holes to film the

security forces around the mosques. They'll be attacking the protesters

when they leave for prayers. This young man calls himself Abu Mahmoud.

We can't reveal his true identity. He's filmed many protests. This one

happened a few months ago at a checkpoint on the edge of Deraa.

TRANSLATION: When we approached the checkpoint everyone was holding up

their phones. Opposite us the security people had their guns. The

feeling was our weapon is the camera and making a record of all

this. Without warning, the security forces opened fire. One man filming

is hit. 30 people are killed, dozens wounded on this one day.

TRANSLATION: I was always afraid, fearing death, but what kept me

going was the spirit of the people. I've been to the country's

boredering series to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to find out what

Deraa has been through since it defied Syria's rulers six months

ago. I've been talking to people who've come out to meet me., to

victims and to refugees. Witnesses, they say, to terrible abuses back

The town of Deraa is just four miles from the border with Jordan.

But this is as far as we can get. Almost all the foreign media's been

shut out, barred from reporting what's going on inside Syria. But

the people here have refused to be silenced. They've been taking their

own pictures and speaking out about the torture and killing. This is

their story. It all began in March at this

school in Deraa. A group of children, some as young as 11, were

arrested for scribbling graffiti, criticises the Assad regime. They

were held for two weeks by state security. And they were tortured.

This demonstration on March 18, to demand the children's release,

sparked Syria's revolution. We've cross checked the footage we've

obtained from Deraa to put the story together for the first time.

On that day, security forces fired on the crowd, killing at least four

people, the first to die in Syria's Thousands of ordinary people took

to the streets for the funerals. Now, the protests were about

Deraa hadn't benefited from the spoils handed out to cronies of the

ruling elite. People attacked a statue of the President's father

and other symbols of the government. The video shows security forces on

rooftops firing at unarmed civilians. More people were killed.

One foreign journalist, a Jordanian, had managed to get into the city.

At every junkure when the authorities became even more heavy

handed, to clamp down on these protests, and there were killings,

it almost snowballed. The images that come to mind is a popular,

spontaneous uprising. It's just almost like something that you read

from text books about the great revolutions of the world.

From the start, the om arery mosque in Deraa was the centre of the

protest. Posters of the dead were displayed on its walls. A Taxi

Driver from Deraa lives near the mosque. He risked his life to meet

me on the border. We cannot show his face. He was there on the night

of the 23rd of March, when security forces attacked.

TRANSLATION: People came from all across town and despite the

shooting, encircled the Omari mosque. The crowds grew and the

numbers of security forces grew. They began to shoot intensively.

The attack on the mosque wents on for two more days.

TRANSLATION: The young men resisted with stones and sticks. They had no

weapons. They didn't have knives or anything. They were just trying to

defend themselves with stones. the army finally seized the mosque,

they'd killed at least 60 people, according to local activists. Some

of the dead were the wounded being treated inside the mosque. People

were afraid to go to the hospitals. TRANSLATION: Anyone wounded in the

hospitals was taken by the security forces. If he was close to death,

they'd just finish him off. Even for those who made it to the

private clinics, it was often too late. One man died just after he

When the soldiers seized the mosque, they made their own trophy videos.

They were posted online. They swore to fight for the President and the

Bashar Al-Assad has led Syria for 11 years, since he inherited the

presidency from his father, who'd ruled with an iron grip for three

decades. There were high hopes Assad would reform this police

state. He trained as an eye doctor in London, with his glamorous

British-born wife, the Syrian leader was courted in the Blair

years. It's important to engage with Syria, because Syria is going

to be an important part of building a peaceful and stable future in the

Middle East. But that was all wishful thinking, after what

happened in Daraa. President Assad was quick to claim a foreign

conspiracy was behind the violence. It was being carried out by armed

criminals and terrorists, he said. Did you see any armed opposition

within the demonstrations or any criminals or terrorists, as the

government alleged they were facing? Almost two weeks I was

there, I only saw more and more ordinary Daraa residents coming to

the streets. That's not just youths. It was women, children, more and

more people on the streets. Peacefully? Peacefully, peacefully.

Not armed? Not armed. Army's Fourth Division had been

sent to Daraa. This unit, commanded by the President's brother, had

brutally suppressed political People took extraordinary risks,

It wasn't the army as a whole. It was the security forces and this

particular division of the army, led by Maher al-Assad. People

talked about the ruthlessness. regime was threatened as the

protests spread from Daraa to the capital Damascus and then to many

town as cross the country. -- town as cross the country. Some

had a history of rebellion, ethnic and religion -- religious tensions.

There's more at stake in this tension than any of the uprisings

across the Middle East this year. Syria has influence over fragile

Lebanon and Syria holds the key to peace with Israel. Assad's greatest

ally is Iran. If the Syrian regime falls it will affect the whole

future of the region. I travelled to Turkey and the camp

as long the Syrian border to talk to an activist from Daraa. Omar al

Mukdad is now a refugee here, like But in April, Omar and his secret

network in Daraa were using the internet to defy the regime. They

want to take the revolution offline and finish this by killing people.

But the sich in Daraa on the grounds, it's the crimes against

humanity. In Syria, medical staff have suffered some of the most

shocking violence. In Daraa security forces even targeted

ambulances. As you see here, this is the ambulance. An activist

filmed the moment when security forces shot directly through the

windscreen. They shoot him twice. They kill him. They've killed the

person inside the ambulance, the The video was smuggled out and

posted on the internet. People are desperate, they're shouting. What

are they shouting? They say "This is Daraa today. This is Daraa today.

They killed him." Through March and April, there was a rule of fear in

The security forces stormed the streets. Men were being rounded up

for interrogation. Bodies were The Jordanian journalist was one of

those arrested. Suleiman was expelled from Syria. But first he

was interrogated in a notorious prison, where many people from

Deraa were taken. I saw a young man who had been dangled from his feet.

He had saliva on his mouth. There almost beastly sounds coming out of

him. I saw someone who was also electrified. In April, the

President promised to lift the state of emergency clamped on the

country for 30 years. He said he would bring in reform. But to the

people of Deraa comedies seemed hollow promises. -- these seemed

horror -- hollow promises. The result had spread to towns

surrounding Deraa. Demonstrators defied army snipers on the rooftop.

Every Friday, after prayers, the protests swelled. One woman living

in America would be confronted by the horror of those days. She had

been visiting her family in Izra, near Deraa, and had seen the

crackdown. My father used to cry every day when he was watching the

news. He was very scared about me, my family and stuff. He told me I

should leave the country. Back in the States, on April 22nd, Hala

locked on to Facebook. By chance Army snipers had killed 25

protesters in Izra, one of them and eight-year-old trialled. The

pictures are too graphic to show. - - child. Look at that kid. Hala

realised that one of the wounded was her father. This is my father.

He passed away in the video. I saw when he passed away. That video

makes me very upset and angry. Because I know my father, my father

is a very brave man, very honest. He was shot three times. And he

doesn't know anything about politics. The soldiers enforcing

President Assad's will rarely speak. But in Turkey I met an army sniper

who had been sent to Deraa. Wasim defected and lives in fear of his

life. We cannot show his face. But I saw his military ID. Wasim

thought he was defending his country. TRANSLATION: The officers

were telling us they were armed gangs, part of a foreign conspiracy.

We said, we want to go to Izra, to Deraa, we want to clean it up and

kill the terrorists. Syrian state television was showing pictures

They said that these armed men were protesters. But when Wasim got to

the city, he discovered that these gangs were de shabbiha, or the

ghosts. They are thugs, recruited to do the army's dirty work and act

as agents provocateurs. TRANSLATION: The officers are said

to us, there are armed groups. But don't shoot them. They belonged to

us. There are no rebels or conspirators, only the people.

Should the people. But we didn't want to. -- shoot the people.

Wasim's unit was sent to tan, under orders to shoot to kill. One

soldier who refused was never seen TRANSLATION: Some of us did not

shoot at people. We were shooting at the walls, up in the air. There

was a unit behind us, soldiers from the Fourth Division, loyal to Maher

Assad. If you didn't shoot, they would shoot you from behind. They

Wasim knew that he had to get out. He escaped with 20 others from his

unit and fled across the border. Other soldiers were not so lucky,

as Omar, the activist from Deraa, showed me. They shoot the soldiers,

from behind. There are about 12. Here, we have eight. And the people

of Deraa are helping? Yes, the civilians are helping. The soldiers,

what happened to them? Some of them fled the country, some of them are

hiding even now. I guess some of them are dead. Ultimately, it will

be the army which will determine the fate of this Arab uprising.

Syria is not like Egypt or Libya, where the army, or a significant

part of it, sided with the people, forcing out a dictator. Syria's

army has been carefully tailored over the years to make sure the

Assad regime stays in power. To understand more I was off to meet

one of the highest-ranking defendants -- defectors, a Sunni,

like most people in Syria. Unlike him, 90% of the officers in the

security forces are Alawite. They are from the same minority sect as

the President's family. And they are DI and -- die hard Assad

loyalists. I waited in a safe house. The colonel is a wanted man. He

just announced on line that he and other Sunni officers were forming a

TRANSLATION: I sympathised with the revolution from the start. I was

under constant surveillance. They had spies in all of the military

ballots. -- barracks. The captain and those with him confirmed that

atrocities by security forces were taking place in Deraa and throw out

Syria. I asked who was responsible. TRANSLATION: Bashar al-Assad is

responsible. He is the head of the state and no decree can be issued

without his authorisation. It is a More and more defective videos had

appeared online. Thousands of soldiers are thought to have

abandoned units and drying the protesters. -- joined the

protesters. But with so many Assad loyalists, it will be hard to get

the army to reach 80 been point. TRANSLATION: We are counting on

defections. There are larger numbers occurring every day. But we

know that the regime cannot be taken out without using force. We

are now preparing for this stage. Do you understand? If they don't

agree to give up power peacefully, we will take them out by force.

until that happens, the army will continue to be Assad's instrument

of repression. On April 25th, the security forces were ordered to

begin the siege of Deraa. Tanks Homes were blasted with artillery

as the whole city was punished for its defiance. Water, food and

electricity were cut off. Bodies were stored in refrigerated trucks.

It was too dangerous to go out and Four days after the siege began,

villages around Deraa tried to break the blockade and bring food

Again, the security forces opened fire, even though there were many

children in the crowd. Nawal al Shari begged her son not to join

the march that day. 15-year-old Thamer, like many of Deraa's

children, had been inspired to join the revolution. TRANSLATION: His

conscience would not let him accept the bloodshed. He kept going out,

protesting with the people. Every Dozens of people were killed that

day. Scores were arrested. Nawal's son was one of them. Thamer was

taken to the intelligence headquarters in Damascus.

TRANSLATION: There was a witness inside the prison who saw and heard

him while he was being tortured. He was calling out for help, calling

out, God, freedom, Syria! That is all he said. When Thamer's family

was returned to the family, five weeks later, he had been beaten.

His neck was broken, he had bullet TRANSLATION: Wall of my son's

features were gone. He was not my son, who used to be a handsome

prince in my eyes. How can I describe how he looked? I mean,

don't they have children? Are they The torture and killing of Thamer

and one of his school friends brought new impetus to the

revolution. Across Syria, 100 children have been killed by the

A defiant regime brought supporters onto the streets of Damascus in

June. The President offered a national dialogue, but the killing

went on. We asked the Syrian government for an interview about

the human rights abuses in the country. They did not respond. The

pictures taken in Tareq Abu Rajab, however, take -- tell their own

story. A UN investigation has found there had been widespread and

systematic attacks against civilians by Syria's security

forces. Many people now believe that President Assad and his

henchmen should be in the dock at Nawal, his father was killed by an

army sniper, is the first Syrian to try to take a case against the

regime to The Hague. We have to stop the killing. We need to remove

that President. I will keep fighting to the end, until I see

him in the International Criminal Court, to justice. When Colonel

Gaddafi was ousted in August, Deraa took part. But Syria's Arab Spring

is now approaching winter. It will last much longer than Libya's or

Egypt's. The international community has condemned the Assad

regime and impose sanctions. But there is no appetite for military

intervention, and it is not what the people of Deraa want. We need

the international community to surround the regime from outside.

If you cut the financial sources, they don't have money to pay for

their thugs and their criminals. After five months, the army still

occupies Deraa. Local activists say at least 600 people have died. 3000

are missing in the area. The latest pictures smuggled out show the

activists are still gathering evidence. They are still writing

graffiti, demanding an end to the regime. TRANSLATION: Deraa's people

have suffered, but they are resistant. God will grant them

victory. It started in Deraa and The people of Deraa say that they

will not stay silent. They won't give up. Whatever the price they