continuing story of Zainab

Various media sources are reporting today that Zainab al-Hosni is in fact alive and appeared on Syrian television. She has not yet been reunited with her family who doesn't know why she disappeared. If in fact she is alive, it is a wonderful ending to her horrific story. 




Yet the story doesn't end there - it just gets stranger.


Many questions remain - was she forced into an interview against her will? Is she being used as a political tool? And perhaps the biggest question:


Who is the young woman in the morgue whom the family identified as Zainab - and buried? 


Below is an excerpt from The Guardian on the deepening mystery behind this story:


Syria's government has sought to score a propaganda coup with the mysterious TV appearance of a young woman who had been reported to have been beheaded and mutilated by state security agents.
The macabre story was revived on Tuesday when the main state TV channel screened a brief interview with a woman claiming to be Zainab al-Hosni.
International human rights groups and Syrian opposition activists said Hosni had been killed after being detained in July.
The station described the interview as intended to discredit foreign "media fabrications".
Hosni's family confirmed that it was her in the film, but they could not say whether she was alive or had in fact been killed after the interview. The episode thus ended up posing troubling new questions.
Last month Amnesty International described Hosni, 18, as the first woman to have died in Syrian state custody, after her mutilated body was discovered by her family at the military hospital in her home town of Homs, having apparently been tortured and partially dismembered.
In the interview, a black-clad young woman who identified herself as Hosni and flashed her identity card said she had run away from home in July because her brothers had abused her.
She said that her family did not know that she was alive and asked her mother for forgiveness.
"I am very much alive and I have opted to tell the truth because I am planning to get married in the future and have kids who I want to be registered," she told her interviewer, calmly but slightly hesitantly.
Relatives confirmed that the woman they saw on TV was indeed her, said Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch.
"They were relieved to know their sister is alive, or hope that she is still alive. At the same time, they are angry and confused because they feel they have been tricked. All this confusion should highlight the need for the Syrian authorities to allow human rights observers into the country.
"This is a strange story that just got stranger. Let's establish some facts. There is a decapitated body of a woman that was buried by the Hosni family. Who is this dead girl who was buried?"

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