Syria: William Hague reiterates support for rebels as new doubts emerge John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said that only "15 to 20 per cent" of rebels could be described as "bad guys," while John McCain, the pro-intervention Republican senator who visited Syria earlier this year to meet rebel groups, has also been promising that there is a moderate core of rebels. Mr Hague described the SNC as "the best possible hope for a political solution to the crisis and for a future Syria which is stable and democratic," however the video has illustrated complexity of the situation on the ground, where rebel groups are not clearly divided on secular and jihadist lines, with many committing extortion, kidnapping and executions. The New York Times reported that the rebels in the pictures - which were picked up by US television networks yesterday - may also have received weapons from the Western-supported Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army. The rebel commander in the video, Abdul Samad Issa, 37, who is also known as "The Uncle," was reportedly motivated to carry out the executions after capturing the Syrian soldiers and discovering videos of the rape of Syrian civilians on their mobile phones. He was also partly motivated by the fact that his father was killed in the 1982 crackdown against Muslim Brotherhood rebels by Hafez al-Assad, the father of Syria's current president, further illustrating the tensions arising out Syria's deeply troubled recent history. A western diplomatic source, speaking to a select group of reporters last month, said that less than "30 per cent" of rebels fighting in Syria are palatable to Britain. He added that the rebels in that category were not in a coordinated group. Having given this damming assessment of the armed opposition, he said a political solution remained the best option: "The alternatives to a political deal are all unattractive, Saddam '91 scenario; Somalisation; or splitting up the country."