Be prepared for what you will see here !
What can be clearer evidence than these images of what Arab regimes are
capable of.
It graphically demonstrates why Israel cannot let its vigilance slip when
surrounding Arab countries threaten Israel with annihilation.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/syria-torture-photos-amanpour/
EXCLUSIVE: Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad regime
By Mick Krever and Schams Elwazer, CNN
Editor's note: Read this story on
<http://arabic.cnn.com/middleeast/2014/01/21/syria-torture-photos> CNNArabic
(CNN) -- A team of internationally renowned war crimes prosecutors and
forensic experts has found "direct evidence" of "systematic torture and
killing" by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the lawyers on
the team say
<http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2014/images/01/20/syria-board.of.inquiry.doha.
jan.2014.18.1.version.x.to.print..pdf> in a new report.
Their report, based on thousands of photographs of dead bodies of alleged
detainees killed in Syrian government custody, would stand up in an
international criminal tribunal, the group says.
<http://www.amanpour.com/> CNN's "Amanpour" was given the report in a joint
exclusive with The Guardian newspaper.
"This is a smoking gun," said David Crane, one of the report's authors. "Any
prosecutor would like this kind of evidence -- the photos and the process.
This is direct evidence of the regime's killing machine."
Crane, the first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone,
indicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Taylor went on to become the first former head of state
convicted of war crimes since World War II. He was sentenced to 50 years in
prison.
CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the photographs,
documents and testimony referenced in the report, and is relying on the
conclusions of the team behind it, which includes international criminal
prosecutors, a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist and an expert in
digital imaging.
Alleged torture of prisoners by Assad regime
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140120193735-amanpour-syria-de-silva
-nice-hamilton-story-body.jpgAnalyzing Syria's alleged torture report
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140120192051-amanpour-syrian-war-tor
ture-c-00005825-story-body.jpgHow will Syria react to torture allegations?
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140121194516-aman-tony-blair-story-b
ody.jpgBlair 'sickened' by Syria photos
The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings,
strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing, according to the
report.
In a group of photos of 150 individuals examined in detail by the experts,
62% of the bodies showed emaciation -- severely low body weight with a
hollow appearance indicating starvation. The majority of all of the victims
were men most likely aged 20-40.
A complex numbering system was also used to catalog the corpses, with only
the relevant intelligence service knowing the identities of the corpses. It
was an effort, the report says, to keep track of which security service was
responsible for the death, and then later to provide false documentation
that the person had died in a hospital.
One of the three lawyers who authored the report -- Sir Desmond de Silva,
the former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone -- likened
the images to those of Holocaust survivors.
The emaciated bodies were the product of starvation as a method of torture,
"reminiscent of the pictures of those [who] were found still alive in the
Nazi death camps after World War II," he said in a CNN interview.
"This evidence could underpin a charge of crimes against humanity -- without
any shadow of a doubt," de Silva told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "Of course,
it's not for us to make a decision. All we can do is evaluate the evidence
and say this evidence is capable of being accepted by a tribunal as
genuine."
Throughout the civil war in Syria, al-Assad's regime has denied accusations
of human rights abuses and blamed "terrorists" for the deadly violence.
The report draws its evidence from the testimony of a Syrian government
defector codenamed "Caesar" and almost 27,000 photographs he provided; in
all 55,000 such images were brought out of the country.
According to the report, Caesar worked as photographer in the military
police. Once the war broke out, his work consisted entirely of documenting
"killed detainees."
He claimed to have photographed as many as 50 bodies a day.
At one point he took the unusual step of photographing a group of bodies to
show that it "looked like a slaughterhouse," according to the report.
The fact that all the bodies were photographed, the report's authors say,
strongly suggests that "the killings were systematic, ordered, and directed
from above."
"It's a callous, industrial machine grinding its citizens," Crane said to
CNN. "It is industrial age mass killing."
The killings may have been so thoroughly documented as a way of proving each
person's death without allowing the deceased's family to see the body, the
report suggests. Also, it may have been aimed at proving that "orders to
execute individuals had been carried out."
It is also possible that, far from being a systematic plan to document human
rights abuses, the photographing was simply the way it had always been done
-- a little-thought-out continuation of a long-time practice.
The report was authored by de Silva, Crane, and Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice,
former lead prosecutor against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Its release comes just days ahead of the Geneva II conference, the latest
push for a diplomatic solution to Syria's bloody civil war.
The lawyers were hired to write the report by the British law firm
Carter-Ruck, which in turn was funded by the Government of Qatar, de Silva
told Amanpour.
"Ultimately, the validity of our conclusions turn on the integrity of the
people involved," he said. "We, the team, were very conscious of the fact
there are competing interests in the Syrian crisis -- both national and
international. We were very conscious of that."
"We approached our task with a certain amount of skepticism, bearing that in
mind."
CNN was referred to Carter-Ruck, and this report, by a Qatari government
official, and a CNN producer met in the Qatari capital Doha with the
report's authors.
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/17/world/how-syria-talks-were-derailed-before-th
ey-started/index.html> How Syria talks were derailed before they started
Mountains of data
The report says "Caesar" brought from Syria photographs of thousands of
people who had been killed, he says, by the regime.
The lawyers and the three forensics experts with whom they worked were given
26,948 images on a laptop computer. They, in turn, did a "formal analysis"
of images of 835 and then a much more detailed examination of 150
individuals.
The images given to CNN paint a horrific scene.
Stomachs, faces and even legs are concave -- sunken, rather than convex. On
some torsos, bruising and bleeding is so severe that the victims' skin is a
mosaic of black, red, purple and pink.
Oblong and parallel wounds, a mix of bruises and torn skin, line one man's
chest and torso, covering every inch of the victim's body from neck to
pelvis.
"This is not just somebody who is thin, or who maybe hasn't had enough food
because there's a war going on," Dr. Stuart Hamilton, a forensic pathologist
who examined the evidence, told Amanpour. "This is somebody who has been
really starved."
The forensics team identified the neck bruising as consistent with
strangulation with a rope, piece of rubber, or other such object, as opposed
to the marks that would be left by a hanging.
"Strangulation of this kind is also consistent with strangulation being used
as a method of torture," the report reads.
Digital imaging expert Stephen Cole also offered his assessment that the
images were not digitally altered or manipulated.
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/15/world/aleppo-syria-destroyed-homes-irpt/index
.html> Haunting images of Syria's abandoned homes
Evidence allegedly shows process 'line by line'
So why do the lawyers think that they were given "smoking gun" proof of
murders by the al-Assad regime?
"In Sierra Leone I had 1.2 million human beings that were destroyed but I
could not match them to names and incidents," David Crane said. "Here we
have the photographs, the photographer and the reports with documents,
stamps, signatures and dates."
Each body in the photographs seen by CNN had a number written on it; a
person's hand can often also be seen holding a piece of paper in the frame
of the photograph with the same number written on it.
Those numbers are obscured in the report released to CNN to protect
"Caesar's" identity and to hide the location of the military hospital where
the photos were taken. However a CNN producer in Doha viewed the unobscured,
original images.
When a detainee dies in custody, the body is sent to a military hospital
where it is numbered and photographed as part of a bureaucratic
record-keeping process.
This detailed numbering system, the lawyers say, is compelling evidence of
the government's deadly intent.
When a detainee was killed, the report says, the corpse was assigned a
number that corresponded to the "branch of the security service responsible
for his detention and death."
The body was then taken by the security service to a military hospital.
There, the body would enter the Syrian government's bureaucracy.
Caesar told the lawyers that he, a doctor, and a member of the judiciary
would examine the corpse.
The doctor would then fill out internal paperwork, to document that he had
seen the body, as well as an official death certificate, which would often
list a false cause of death -- like "heart attack" or "breathing problems"
-- to be given to the deceased's family.
At this point, a second number would be assigned to the body, documenting
its false cause of death, according to Caesar, the report says.
"As a prosecutor I have to prove a process," Crane said. "And evidence like
this, though not unusual, is rare in modern international law." He added
that he could walk a tribunal or jury through the process "line by line."
Nice, in an interview with Amanpour, agreed. The number of bodies, the
systematic way in which they were cataloged, and the effort given to
obscuring their causes of death point in one direction, he said.
"You can reasonably infer that this is a pattern of behavior, which has to
have higher authority," he said.
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/15/world/meast/syria-palestinian-refugees-starvi
ng/index.html> Refugees starving to death in Syrian camp
The source
Ever since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- bolstered by false evidence
provided by a source codenamed "Curveball" -- there has been deep skepticism
in both the intelligence community and the press about believing
single-source defectors like "Caesar."
The lawyers who interviewed Caesar, including Crane whose background also
includes experience in military intelligence, said they found him to be "a
truthful and credible witness."
Part of the report reads: "He revealed no signs of being 'sensational,' nor
did he seem partisan. Although he was a supporter of those who opposed the
present regime, the inquiry team is satisfied that he gave an honest account
of his experiences."
Caesar's evidence, they say, "could safely be acted upon in any subsequent
judicial proceedings."
The report says that Caesar claims taking the photos inflicted
"psychological suffering" on him and his colleagues
In September 2011, about seven months after the Syrian civil war broke out,
Caesar was contacted by a man, a relative by marriage, who had fled the
country just days after the uprising began.
This man is referred to in the report as "Caesar's contact," whom the
lawyers also interviewed for the report.
The contact was working with what the report calls "international human
rights groups," and saw "Caesar" as a reliable source of information from
within the country.
Soon Caesar was sending his contact thousands of images. When Caesar became
concerned for his safety, his contacts in the Syrian opposition to whom he
had leaked the photos arranged for him and his family to be smuggled out of
Syria.
The lawyers have remained mum on how that was done, but the report says the
process took four months, and that Caesar left the country before his
family.
"If he wished to exaggerate his evidence it would have been very easy for
him to say that he had actually witnessed executions," the report says. "In
fact, he made it quite plain that he never witnessed a single execution."
It is unclear where Caesar and his family are currently living; the lawyers
say only that they carried out their investigation in the Middle East.
The next step
Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The only way the
court could prosecute someone from Syria would be through a referral from
the United Nations Security Council.
Because of Russia's support for the Assad regime, and because it has veto
power on the council, such a referral seems unlikely, at least for the time
being.
But if, one day, the court were to take up Syria's case, this report would
almost certainly be entered into evidence.
"All we can do is put the ammunition in the pistol," said de Silva. "It is
for others to aim it and pull the trigger."
No comments:
Post a Comment