syria: clear evidence of systematic torture

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-21/former-war-crimes-prosecutors-find-evidence-of-torture-by-syria/5210170

Former war crimes prosecutors say they have found evidence of torture and execution by Syrian regime

By Middle East correspondent Hayden Cooper

Updated 8 minutes ago



Former war crimes prosecutors say they have uncovered evidence of systematic torture by the Syrian government.

The prosecutors' report includes thousands of images of corpses that the investigators say were detainees held and killed by the military police in Syria.

The gruesome images include signs of emaciation, strangulation and beatings inflicted on the victims.

"The killings were systematic, ordered, and directed from above," the report said.

The inquiry was headed by three former war crimes prosecutors, including Sir Desmond de Silva, the former chief prosecutor of the Special Court of Sierra Leone, which delivered the arrest and sentence of Liberia's former president Charles Taylor.


Also on the panel were Sir Geoffrey Nice, the lead-prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Professor David Crane, the first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The trio based their report on thousands of photographs taken by a Syrian man codenamed "Caesar", who helped collect some 55,000 images of about 11,000 bodies.

Caesar was a former member of the Syrian military police, who was tasked with photographing bodies before he fled the country.

"The bodies he photographed since the civil war began showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing," the report said.

"These photographs also included those who appeared to have been starved to death.

"Indeed, there were marks of beatings and burns even upon those emaciated bodies. In some cases the bodies had no eyes."

Report studied 835 images of corpses in detail

"The vast majority of the images were of young men most likely between the ages of 20 and 40. There were no children," the report said.

Of these images, 835 bodies were examined in detail.

"Twenty per cent showed evidence of inflicted trauma and 30 per cent were equivocal," the report said.

"Forty-two per cent showed emaciation."

The study then took a further selection of 150 photographs of bodies for further examination and found that 62 per cent showed emaciation.

It found evidence of torture, such as "strangulation, repeated impact with a rod-like object".

It also found a "high level of emaciation".

Caesar was interviewed several times by the inquiry team.

He told them he had worked for the military police for 13 years before fleeing Syria with his family.

Photos smuggled out of Syria as evidence

The investigators say Caesar had been smuggling out the photographs to use as evidence of systematic torture since the civil war began.

He told the inquiry the photographs of the dead bodies were taken at a military hospital and the corpses were brought from their places of detention.


He says there were as many as 50 bodies per day to photograph.

Caesar said he was never present when the killings allegedly took place.

He said the Syrian regime had two reasons for photographing the bodies - to allow a death certificate to be produced without families seeing the body and to confirm that execution orders had been carried out.

Caesar told the investigators that families of the victims were told the cause of death was "heart attack" or "breathing problems".

The report says each body was given a reference number relating to the branch of the security service responsible for the detention and death.

At the military hospital a further reference number was assigned to falsely document that death occurred there.

"The inquiry team found that the witness codenamed Caesar was not only credible but that his account was most compelling," the report said.

The three former prosecutors who led the investigation say it is clear evidence of systematic torture by the Syrian government.

"Such evidence would support findings of crimes against humanity by the current Syrian regime," the report said.

"Such evidence could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime."

The photographs in the report and the report's findings are unable to be independently verified by the ABC.