Photo Trove Is Said to Show Widespread Torture in Syria
By BEN HUBBARD and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
If genuine, the archive is visual corroboration that Syria is guilty of
mass war crimes against its citizens, just as it seemed to regain some
international standing.
Middle East
Photo Archive Is Said to Show Widespread Torture in Syria
BEIRUT,
Lebanon — Emaciated corpses lie in the sand, their ribs protruding over
sunken bellies, their thighs as thin as wrists. Several show signs of
strangulation. The images conjure memories of some of history’s worst
atrocities.
Numbers
inscribed on more than 11,000 bodies in 55,000 photographs said to
emerge from the secret jails of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad,
suggest that torture, starvation and execution are widespread and even
systematic, each case logged with bureaucratic detail.
This
collection of images was identified as having been part of a voluminous
archive of torture and execution maintained by the Syrian government
and smuggled out by a police photographer who defected and was given the
code name Caesar.
So
far, only a few photographs have actually been released by lawyers
commissioned by the Qatari government, an avowed opponent of Mr. Assad,
and the claims about their origins could not be independently verified.
If
genuine, the trove is new visual corroboration that Mr. Assad’s
government is guilty of mass war crimes against its own citizens, just
as it appeared to regain some international standing. The photographs
were released as delegates from the Syrian government and the opposition
began gathering in Switzerland for long-awaited talks to find a
political solution to end almost three years of civil war.
Crisis in Syria
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Obama
administration officials, who never fully backed the rebel movement to
oust Mr. Assad, had shifted instead to pushing his opponents to sit down
with his envoys. Mr. Assad had begun talking confidently of his
essential role in a common struggle against terrorist threats.
But
just as the use of chemical weapons last summer spurred Washington to
threaten military action against Mr. Assad’s government, prompting it to
give up its chemical arsenal, the new dossier complicates hopes among
some of Mr. Assad’s supporters that the West has no choice but to reach a
political accommodation with him.
Human
rights groups had already documented the government’s systematic use of
torture, forced disappearances and other abuses. But the quantity and
the chilling detail of the visual evidence, if authenticated, may be
much harder to dismiss, even in a conflict that has often been defined
by dueling images of atrocities on both sides.
The
Qatari government hired a team of international law experts with
experience prosecuting war crimes to validate the photographs and to
help explain what they reveal. The investigators say releasing more
images might identify the defector, endangering his family or former
colleagues, and, they say, they cannot release the images out of respect
for the victims’ families.
Mr. Assad’s enemies say they hope the leak, first reported in The Guardian and on CNN,
will cause enough revulsion in the West to prevent any deal that might
leave him in place, or perhaps prod the West into more muscular steps to
remove him, just as the disclosure of the Serbian massacre at
Srebrenica in 1995 moved NATO to launch airstrikes in the Balkans.
But
even the most determined advocates of Western intervention say the
images may dramatize the moral cost of inaction but are unlikely to
change the policy, especially given the American aversion to another
entanglement in the Middle East.
“I
feel like we have had at least one or two Srebrenica moments in Syria
already,” said Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who
has pushed for American action. “The White House has completely hardened
itself to whatever horrendous news might come out of Syria because the
president doesn’t want to get involved.”
The
photos were made public by an anonymous military policeman who had a
grim role in the bureaucracy of the Syrian security apparatus, according
to the lawyers’ report assessing the photos’ veracity.
The
photos were used to provide death certificates to the families of the
victims without turning over the bodies, and were archived as a record
that the men had been killed.
After
“psychological suffering” caused by his job, Caesar saved the photos on
a portable disk drive, and he and the disk were smuggled out of the
country by antigovernment activists, the report said. The activists
contacted the Qatari government, Qatar hired a London law firm, and it
commissioned a team of legal and forensics experts to assess the
credibility of Caesar and his photos.
“It
was like getting the keys to the Nazi archive,” said Geoffrey Nice, one
of the investigators, who previously served as the lead prosecutor in
the trial of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
Rarely,
Mr. Nice said, had war crimes prosecutors received so much information
from a single source. It was “an enormous amount of material in one go,”
he said.
The
team, which included three legal experts with experience in war crimes
prosecutions and three forensic analysts, interviewed Caesar
extensively, examined the photos and deemed them to be credible evidence
that could support charges of crimes against humanity and possibly war
crimes.
“It
is very rare to have this kind of government-backed, industrial,
machinelike, systematic torture and killing of human beings, the likes
of which we haven’t seen since Nuremberg,” said David Crane, an
investigator involved in examining the photos, who previously indicted
President Charles G. Taylor of Liberia.
That
Qatar, which has bankrolled the rebels, funded the project is also
likely to raise questions, though the investigators say they worked
freely.
The
Syrian government, which characterizes the insurgency as a terrorist
campaign backed by foreign powers, has not commented on the report.
At
the site of the peace conference, a Syrian journalist who supports the
government said the timing of the release suggested a plan to undermine
the Syrian government, and he questioned the photos’ authenticity.
“Who
are these people?” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for
fear of retribution. “Are they innocent political prisoners or are they
Al Qaeda?”
Human
rights groups have long accused the Syrian government of such
systematic abuses, especially since the start of the uprising three
years ago.
“If
these photographs are authentic, the torture documented is just the tip
of the iceberg in terms of the atrocities that are happening across the
country,” said Lama Fakih, one author of a 2012 report by Human Rights
Watch based on interviews with more than 200 former detainees and
inspections of former government torture facilities in rebel-held
territory.
In
Washington, Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said the images
“show systematic violations of Syrians’ human rights.”
“We
have been committed to ensuring that Bashar al-Assad, who is the one
responsible for these horrific images, cannot go on leading his
country,” she said, citing American efforts in the peace conference.
While
the report’s authors hope it will create momentum for the prosecution
of war crimes in Syria, they acknowledge that international politics are
likely to block such action. Russia, a major Syrian ally, would
probably veto any effort by the United Nations Security Council to refer
Syria to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Others
recalled how the Obama administration initially threatened missile
strikes against the Syrian government after videos emerged depicting
hundreds of victims of a chemical weapons attack launched by Mr. Assad’s
forces.
“History
is full of leaders who have warned against inaction, indifference and
especially against silence when it mattered most,” Secretary of State
John Kerry said in an emotional address last summer, calling Mr. Assad
“a thug” and “a murderer.”
Peter
D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who studies foreign
policy and public opinion, said that it was an “eerie parallel” but that
the administration is “in a very different place” now, investing
instead in a deal with Mr. Assad to turn over his chemical weapons and a
push for a negotiated end to the war.
Mr.
Feaver imagined that the images might provide new ammunition to those
who want “to go into the Oval Office, throw it down on the desk, and
say, ‘If we don’t act, this is on us!’ ”
Ahmed
al-Ahmed, an activist in central Syria, said through Skype: “The report
is nothing new for us. It just documented what has been going on all
along.”
“There were many photos before these that were even worse,” he said.
Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Anne Barnard contributed reporting from Geneva.
Exclusive
Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of 'industrial scale' killing of detainees
Senior war crimes prosecutors say photographs and documents provide 'clear evidence' of systematic killing of 11,000 detainees
COPY http://www.nytimes.com
COPY http://www.nytimes.com
Calls for Assad or
other officials to face justice at the international criminal court in
The Hague have foundered on the problem that Syria is not a member of
the court. Photograph: Reuters
Syrian government officials could face war crimes
charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the
country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees,
according to three eminent international lawyers.
The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August.
Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.
The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.
One of the images contained in the report, purportedly showing
ligature marks across the neck of a prisoner. Photograph: The report
The three lawyers interviewed the source, a military policeman who
worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group and later defected and
fled the country. In three sessions in the last 10 days they found him
credible and truthful and his account "most compelling".
They put all evidence under rigorous scrutiny, says their report, which has been obtained by the Guardian and CNN.
The authors are Sir Desmond de Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, and Professor David Crane, who indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia at the Sierra Leone court.
The defector, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was a photographer with the Syrian military police. He smuggled the images out of the country on memory sticks to a contact in the Syrian National Movement, which is supported by the Gulf state of Qatar. Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups, has called for the overthrow of Assad and demanded his prosecution.
The 31-page report, which was commissioned by a leading firm of London solicitors acting for Qatar, is being made available to the UN, governments and human rights groups. Its publication appears deliberately timed to coincide with this week's UN-organised Geneva II peace conference, which is designed to negotiate a way out of the Syrian crisis by creating a transitional government.
Caesar told the investigators his job was "taking pictures of killed detainees". He did not claim to have witnessed executions or torture. But he did describe a highly bureaucratic system.
"The procedure was that when detainees were killed at their places of detention their bodies would be taken to a military hospital to which he would be sent with a doctor and a member of the judiciary, Caesar's function being to photograph the corpses … There could be as many as 50 bodies a day to photograph which require 15 to 30 minutes of work per corpse," the report says.
"The reason for photographing executed persons was twofold. First to permit a death certificate to be produced without families requiring to see the body, thereby avoiding the authorities having to give a truthful account of their deaths; second to confirm that orders to execute individuals had been carried out."
Families were told that the cause of death was either a "heart attack" or "breathing problems", it added. "The procedure for documentation was that when a detainee was killed each body was given a reference number which related to that branch of the security service responsible for his detention and death.
"When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital. Once the bodies were photographed, they were taken for burial in a rural area."
Three experienced forensic science experts examined and authenticated samples of 55,000 digital images, comprising about 11,000 victims. "Overall there was evidence that a significant number of the deceased were emaciated and a significant minority had been bound and/or beaten with rod-like objects," the report says.
"In only a minority of the cases … could a convincing injury that would account for death be seen, but any fatal injury to the back of the body would not be represented in the images …
"The forensics team make clear that there are many ways in which an individual may be killed with minimal or even absent external evidence of the mechanism."
The inquiry team said it was satisfied there was "clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government. It would support findings of crimes against humanity and could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime."
De Silva told the Guardian that the evidence "documented industrial-scale killing". He added: "This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn't have before. It makes a very strong case indeed."
Calls for Assad or others to face justice at the international criminal court in The Hague have foundered on the problems that Syria is not a member of the court, and that the required referral by the UN security council might not be supported by the US and UK or would be blocked by Russia, Syria's close ally.
Nice said: "It would not necessarily be possible to track back with any degree of certainty to the head of state. Ultimately, in any war crimes trial you can imagine a prosecutor arguing that the overall quantity of evidence meant that the pattern of behaviour would have been approved at a high level.
"But whether you can go beyond that and say it must be head of state-approved is rather more difficult. But 'widespread and systematic' does betoken government control."
Crane said: "Now we have direct evidence of what was happening to people who had disappeared. This is the first provable, direct evidence of what has happened to at least 11,000 human beings who have been tortured and executed and apparently disposed of.
"This is amazing. This is the type of evidence a prosecutor looks for and hopes for. We have pictures, with numbers that marry up with papers with identical numbers – official governmentdocuments. We have the person who took those pictures. That's beyond-reasonable-doubt-type evidence."
A US administration official told the Guardian on Monday: "We stand with the rest of the world in horror at these images which have come to light. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the actions of the regime and call on it to adhere to international obligations with respect to the treatment of prisoners.
"We have long spoken out about mistreatment and deteriorating prison conditions in Syria. These latest reports, and the photographs that support them, demonstrate just how far the regime is willing to go to not only deny freedom and dignity to the Syrian people, but to inflict significant emotional and physical pain in the process. To be sure, these reports suggest widespread and apparently systematic violations of international humanitarian law.
"The regime has the ability to improve the atmosphere for negotiations in Geneva by making progress in several areas. However, this latest report of horrific and inhumane prison conditions/actions further underscores that if anything, it is tarnishing the environment for the talks.
"As we have for over two years, and again today, we call on the Syrian government to grant immediate and unfettered access to all their detention facilities by international documentation bodies, including the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
"We have long said that those responsible for atrocities in Syria must be held accountable for their gross violations of human rights. The United States continues to support efforts to promote accountability and transitional justice, and we call on the international community to do the same."
William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, said: "This report offers further evidence of the systematic violence and brutality being visited upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime. We will continue to press for action on all human rights violations in Syria, and for accountability for those who perpetrate them."
Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch said his organisation had not had the opportunity to authenticate the images. But he added: "We have documented repeatedly how Syria's security services regularly torture – sometimes to death – detainees in their custody.
"These photos – if authentic – suggest that we may have only scratched the surface of the horrific extent of torture in Syria's notorious dungeons. There is only one way to get to the bottom of this and that is for the negotiating parties at Geneva II to grant unhindered access to Syria's detention facilities to independent monitors." COPY http://www.theguardian.com/uk
The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August.
Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.
The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.
One of the images contained in the report, purportedly showing
ligature marks across the neck of a prisoner. Photograph: The report
The three lawyers interviewed the source, a military policeman who
worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group and later defected and
fled the country. In three sessions in the last 10 days they found him
credible and truthful and his account "most compelling".They put all evidence under rigorous scrutiny, says their report, which has been obtained by the Guardian and CNN.
The authors are Sir Desmond de Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, and Professor David Crane, who indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia at the Sierra Leone court.
The defector, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was a photographer with the Syrian military police. He smuggled the images out of the country on memory sticks to a contact in the Syrian National Movement, which is supported by the Gulf state of Qatar. Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups, has called for the overthrow of Assad and demanded his prosecution.
The 31-page report, which was commissioned by a leading firm of London solicitors acting for Qatar, is being made available to the UN, governments and human rights groups. Its publication appears deliberately timed to coincide with this week's UN-organised Geneva II peace conference, which is designed to negotiate a way out of the Syrian crisis by creating a transitional government.
Caesar told the investigators his job was "taking pictures of killed detainees". He did not claim to have witnessed executions or torture. But he did describe a highly bureaucratic system.
"The procedure was that when detainees were killed at their places of detention their bodies would be taken to a military hospital to which he would be sent with a doctor and a member of the judiciary, Caesar's function being to photograph the corpses … There could be as many as 50 bodies a day to photograph which require 15 to 30 minutes of work per corpse," the report says.
"The reason for photographing executed persons was twofold. First to permit a death certificate to be produced without families requiring to see the body, thereby avoiding the authorities having to give a truthful account of their deaths; second to confirm that orders to execute individuals had been carried out."
Families were told that the cause of death was either a "heart attack" or "breathing problems", it added. "The procedure for documentation was that when a detainee was killed each body was given a reference number which related to that branch of the security service responsible for his detention and death.
"When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital. Once the bodies were photographed, they were taken for burial in a rural area."
Three experienced forensic science experts examined and authenticated samples of 55,000 digital images, comprising about 11,000 victims. "Overall there was evidence that a significant number of the deceased were emaciated and a significant minority had been bound and/or beaten with rod-like objects," the report says.
"In only a minority of the cases … could a convincing injury that would account for death be seen, but any fatal injury to the back of the body would not be represented in the images …
"The forensics team make clear that there are many ways in which an individual may be killed with minimal or even absent external evidence of the mechanism."
The inquiry team said it was satisfied there was "clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government. It would support findings of crimes against humanity and could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime."
De Silva told the Guardian that the evidence "documented industrial-scale killing". He added: "This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn't have before. It makes a very strong case indeed."
Calls for Assad or others to face justice at the international criminal court in The Hague have foundered on the problems that Syria is not a member of the court, and that the required referral by the UN security council might not be supported by the US and UK or would be blocked by Russia, Syria's close ally.
Nice said: "It would not necessarily be possible to track back with any degree of certainty to the head of state. Ultimately, in any war crimes trial you can imagine a prosecutor arguing that the overall quantity of evidence meant that the pattern of behaviour would have been approved at a high level.
"But whether you can go beyond that and say it must be head of state-approved is rather more difficult. But 'widespread and systematic' does betoken government control."
Crane said: "Now we have direct evidence of what was happening to people who had disappeared. This is the first provable, direct evidence of what has happened to at least 11,000 human beings who have been tortured and executed and apparently disposed of.
"This is amazing. This is the type of evidence a prosecutor looks for and hopes for. We have pictures, with numbers that marry up with papers with identical numbers – official governmentdocuments. We have the person who took those pictures. That's beyond-reasonable-doubt-type evidence."
A US administration official told the Guardian on Monday: "We stand with the rest of the world in horror at these images which have come to light. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the actions of the regime and call on it to adhere to international obligations with respect to the treatment of prisoners.
"We have long spoken out about mistreatment and deteriorating prison conditions in Syria. These latest reports, and the photographs that support them, demonstrate just how far the regime is willing to go to not only deny freedom and dignity to the Syrian people, but to inflict significant emotional and physical pain in the process. To be sure, these reports suggest widespread and apparently systematic violations of international humanitarian law.
"The regime has the ability to improve the atmosphere for negotiations in Geneva by making progress in several areas. However, this latest report of horrific and inhumane prison conditions/actions further underscores that if anything, it is tarnishing the environment for the talks.
"As we have for over two years, and again today, we call on the Syrian government to grant immediate and unfettered access to all their detention facilities by international documentation bodies, including the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
"We have long said that those responsible for atrocities in Syria must be held accountable for their gross violations of human rights. The United States continues to support efforts to promote accountability and transitional justice, and we call on the international community to do the same."
William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, said: "This report offers further evidence of the systematic violence and brutality being visited upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime. We will continue to press for action on all human rights violations in Syria, and for accountability for those who perpetrate them."
Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch said his organisation had not had the opportunity to authenticate the images. But he added: "We have documented repeatedly how Syria's security services regularly torture – sometimes to death – detainees in their custody.
"These photos – if authentic – suggest that we may have only scratched the surface of the horrific extent of torture in Syria's notorious dungeons. There is only one way to get to the bottom of this and that is for the negotiating parties at Geneva II to grant unhindered access to Syria's detention facilities to independent monitors." COPY http://www.theguardian.com/uk
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