Mother of girl who was reported to have been killed not sure it was her daughter on TV

The mother of Zainab al-Hosni, the 18 year-old woman who was reportedly tortured and killed by Syrian security forces, told Al Arabiya TV on Wednesday that she wished her daughter were still alive.

“The first thing I did when I went to the morgue, is that I received my son’s corpse,” she said on Panaroma, an Al Arabiya TV program, adding “[people working in the hospital] later told me to take Zainab’s corpse and to sign a paper that says that a terrorist group is the one that killed her.”

But Zainab’s mother, whose name was not given, did not absolutely reject the claim that the girl shown on Syrian state TV was her daughter.

“I doubt that the girl on TV is my daughter, and if she was, then who was the girl that the morgue people handed to me … I wish that my daughter was still alive.”

Meanwhile, opposition officials in Syria accused Bashar al-Assad’s regime of concocting a media campaign to cover the real human violations being practiced against protesters in the country.

“The Syrian regime is trying to convince the world that it is not at war with the Syrian people, but with media organizations abroad it claims are trying to distort its image,” said Bassam Ja’ara, a writer and journalist from Syria.

Abu Ja’far, a member of the Syrian Revolution Commission, who lives in Homs, said that forensics can easily verify whether it is Zainab or not.

Other Syrian activists dubbed the incident as a theatrical play, a staged farce, and as evidence offered up the fact that that the real name of Zainab’s mother is Dalal, which is different from the name mentioned by the woman who claims she is Zainab al-Hosni.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said Zainab vanished in late July and that the Syrian authorities returned her “dismembered body” to her family on September 17.

It said that the killing and mutilation of the 18-year-old “highlights the need ... for an international investigation into rampant killings and torture in Syria.”