So disappointed at Snopes for this, they're usually a reliable source for refuting or confirming stories but they got this wrong and it's irresponsible to be publishing that when new information has been coming out recently. They blew this one here are the sources, named one by one with exact wording in french and translated, of why we now think the terrorists tortured hostages (published yesterday): http://heatst.com/uk/exclusive-witnesses-knife-torture-castration-and-severed-heads-at-bataclan/
Even if we acknowledge that they "covered up" the gruesome details of torture, do we have to believe they did it to protect the outrage at Muslims? Maybe they just did it because the story is fucking horrendous and they showed some poise and compassion by wanting to save the victim's families the grief of hearing about castrations on our wonderful 24/7 news stations?
That's the first I heard of that as a potential reason. I would have thought they would hide that because they didn't want to shock an already traumatized public to make them even more fearful to go about their lives
The biggest problem after reading through that is that everything is second-hand supposition, hence the French inquiry. An unidentified investigator, and what looks to be people saying what they heard or heard from others. Then stuff like this: "Heat Street has collected many contemporary reports from various witnesses, all of whom described hearing of torture, most of whom specify torture by knife." From Le Monde: "Alice and her companions thought perhaps the attackers were finishing off the wounded “perhaps with knives”." That's some serious twisting of words from second-hand speculation. In terms of the severed heads and blood mentioned as being seen in the aftermath, I'm guessing from the explosions, which seems feasible enough. In the end, there's a lot of finger pointing based on very sparse hearsay, which I'm guessing is why none of the major news outlets have picked up on it at all.
