A researcher with the human rights group Avaaz, which has been critical of the regime and documented hundreds of its abuses, said rebels were increasingly admitting to executions of captured soldiers and in particular “Shabiha” or militia. “We have been receiving too many reports about the Free Syrian Army executing people in Aleppo,” he said. “It is very ugly. The FSA is doing some terrible things there, and many of them are jihadists.”