A/HRC/21/50 familial ties to Abdelmuti Mashlab, a new member of parliament, and existing feuds with some members of the armed groups. II. Findings from further investigation A. Consistency of accounts 5. More than forty separate interviews were considered by the commission. All interviewees were consistent in their portrayal of the events and their description of the perpetrators as Government forces and Shabbiha. Apart from the two witnesses in the Government report, no other account supported the Government‘s version of events. As noted, the commission‘s request to interview those two witnesses was not fulfilled. The commission, nevertheless, carefully reviewed their testimony as set out in the Government report and interviews they gave to other sources, and deemed their accounts to be unreliable as they contained a number of inconsistencies. d Not making the witnesses available to the commission meant that those inconsistencies could not be further explored. Separately, a high-ranking defector that the commission deemed credible reported that, prior to his defection, he was asked to help manufacture evidence supporting the Government‘s version of events. 6. At the same time, accounts of other witnesses interviewed by the commission remained consistent over time, including those collected from children, despite the fact that they were conducted by different interviewers. e The commission found it highly unlikely that the dozens of people interviewed in Taldou could be taking part in an extensive fabrication over such an extended period. 7. Consequently, the commission found the version of events received from the Government to be uncorroborated and insufficient when compared to the larger body of evidence collected from other sources. Besides the Government‘s report, little evidence was collected suggesting that anyone other than Government forces and Shabbiha committed the killings.f d e f As examples: 1. They failed to describe the location of the main incident, specifically the Abdulrazzak family home; 2. The witness purported to know that in the northern part of the town ―terrorists‖ were distributing ammunition to each other, but elsewhere the witness described her presence as being in the centre near the clock tower or further south during the same time frame; 3-. The witness also stated that the ―terrorists‖ included ―strangers who don‘t belong to our village,‖ and was able to remember their names individually while the village has 30,000 people, and the whole area of Al-Houla‘s population is more than 100,000. It is unclear how she could be so certain of terrorist individual identities\names in the described context; 4. The witness said she saw the burning at the hospital area ―when we passed by.‖ The area around the hospital was in government hands throughout, so it is unclear when and how she was able to reach the given location given the circumstances of the day; 5. She suggested that the armed groups were in fact mentioning the real first names of the groups‘ leaders over their radio communications. The commission finds this lacking credibility; 6. The witness described the Al-Sayed family as having been shot from across the street when all other evidence, including by UNSMIS visiting the scene, indicate the victims died from gunshots at close range. UNSMIS, international human rights NGOs, journalists and the CoI have all conducted interviews during the course of their investigations into the events. The commission examined the version of events reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 7 June 2012, by Rainer Hermann, and by journalist Marat Musin, on Anna news and Russia Today, 2 June 2012, (Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyi-tJ_0PPg) both of which blamed the killings on anti-Government armed groups. The commission found these reports relied 65