- The Zainab Alhusni case stirred world outrage
- 18-year-old left home in July, didn't come back; security forces killed her, activists say
- "I am now alive and not dead," a woman who says she's Alhusni now says on Syrian TV
- Amnesty International: If the body wasn't hers, "authorities need to disclose whose it was"
(CNN) -- Zainab Alhusni, the young woman reportedly slain and mutilated while in Syrian custody, appears to be very much alive.
A young woman appeared on Syrian TV on Wednesday and identified herself as Alhusni, whose reported mutilation stirred outrage and condemnation across the world, long angered by the tough government crackdown against protesters there.
"I saw on TV that security forces detained me and burned my body ... and that they cut it up and handed it to my parents," said the woman, who resembles pictures of Alhusni obtained by CNN.
After that, the woman, who is from the restive city of Homs, decided to tell authorities the "truth."
"I am now alive and not dead," the woman said on TV.
Several sources told CNN last month that the 18-year-old woman stepped away from her home in July to buy groceries.
At the time, she was whisked away by Syrian security forces to coax the surrender of her activist brother, Mohammed, who often led demonstrations against embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. She ended up beheaded and dismembered, a neighbor, activists and human rights groups said.
But in the Syrian TV interview, the woman said she left home without telling her parents and went to live with relatives about five days before Ramadan, which would be in late July. She said her parents don't know she is alive.
"I ran away because my brothers used to torture me and beat me. That is why I left," she said.
She said security forces never detained her or raided their house.
"I want to tell my mother to forgive me and be pleased with me," she said.
Alhusni's family members couldn't be reached for comment.
Amnesty International said the TV interview clearly raised questions about information it released last month on Alhusni's death and the discovery of a body at Homs Military Hospital.
"That statement was based on information provided by sources close to the incident itself, who passed Amnesty International video footage of a dismembered body. If the body was not that of Zainab al-Hosni, then clearly the Syrian authorities need to disclose whose it was, the cause and circumstances of the death, and why Zainab al-Hosni's family were informed that she was the victim," Amnesty said.
Sources who reported Alhusni's death reported a chilling sequence of events after her disappearance.
Several days after she went missing in July, security forces called the family and offered to meet them in a pro-Assad neighborhood, where they would trade Alhusni for her activist brother.
On September 10, the family says, Mohammed was wounded in a demonstration. He came back to his loved ones a corpse. The family believes he was tortured to death.
In a statement posted to YouTube, another brother, Yousif Alhusni, describes multiple gunshot wounds to Mohammed's chest and a single shot through his mouth.
The family went to collect Mohammed's body from a hospital when doctors told them another unclaimed body with the label "Zainab Alhusni" had been kept in the morgue's freezer for some time.
When the family received the body, the head and arms had been chopped off. Chunks of the body's flesh were charred, appearing in places to have been melted or burned down to the bone.
Authorities forced Zainab Alhusni's mother to sign a document saying her daughter and son had been kidnapped and killed by an armed gang, Amnesty International said in an online statement.
Asked why she chose to appear on TV, the woman said, "because one day, I will get married and bear children, and I will need to register them."
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_world/~3/L4cfN8d9Oyk/index.html
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