CLICK IMAGE for slideshow: (Photo combination by Yahoo News, Photos by SANA/AP Photo, Courtesy of The Caesar Team/Coalition for a Democratic Syria.)
The State Department has obtained 27,000 photographs showing
the emaciated, bruised and burned bodies of Syrian torture victims —
gruesome images that a top official told Yahoo News constitute "smoking
gun" evidence that can be used to bring war-crimes charges against the
regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The photos are "horrific — some of them put you in visceral
pain," said Stephen J. Rapp, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war
crimes, in an interview. "This is some of the strongest evidence we've
seen in the area of proof of the commission of mass atrocities." The photos — a small number of which will be put on public
display for the first time on Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Museum —
were smuggled out of Syria by an official regime photographer who has
since defected and is known only by his code name, Caesar. They were shown at a closed-door session of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee in July where Caesar, wearing a hood, testified.
They are now being analyzed at Rapp's request by the FBI in part as an
effort to determine whether any U.S. citizens may have been among the
victims — a finding that could be the basis to bring criminal charges in
the U.S. against officials of the Assad regime. The Syrian government has officially denounced the photos as
fakes and suggested many of the corpses seen are actually of militants
who died in battle. While FBI agents are still reviewing the photos, Rapp said that
bureau officials have already "informally" told him "they think it is
impossible they could be forgeries. There is no evidence of doctoring." (A bureau spokesman confirmed only the review of the photos,
adding: "It will take some time to complete the authentication
process.")
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Syrian Army defector Caesar, (in a blue hooded jacket) who has smuggled out of Syria more than 50,000 photographs …
The
story behind the photos begins in March 2011, when Arab Spring protests
against the Assad government swept through Syria. As the military began
rounding up suspected dissidents, Caesar — a military police officer —
was assigned to lead a team of 11 photographers whose job it was to
document the deaths of detainees brought to a military hospital from
three detention centers around Damascus.But by the summer of 2013, Caesar has told investigators, he
was so sickened by what he was seeing that he made contact with Syrian
rebels. "I can't do this anymore," he told them, according to David
Crane, a former war-crimes prosecutor for Sierra Leone who spent hours
interviewing Caesar as part of a separate review of the photos
commissioned by the government of Qatar. Caesar began smuggling his photos to the rebels, providing them
with thumb drives concealed in his shoes, Crane said. To protect his
family, Caesar faked his death, staging an elaborate funeral, before he
escaped from Syria in August 2013. He is now in hiding in Europe. The photos, according to Crane, document "an industrial killing machine not seen since the Holocaust."
They show corpses, some of them lined up in a warehouse, many appearing
to be victims of starvation, their ribs protruding from emaciated
bodies. Some show men whose eyes were gouged out; others had bruises
and lacerations consistent with beatings and in some cases
strangulation, according to a report that Crane co-wrote about the
photos released in January. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee who had called Caesar as a witness at the closed-door
hearing in July, said that when he first saw the photos he thought of
his father. As a member of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, “my father
had taken photos at Dachau when it was liberated, of the bodies stacked
up at the ovens. This is eerily reminiscent. It's absolutely appalling.”
What's also noteworthy about the photos, according to Crane,
was the methodical nature of the enterprise: Each photo includes tags
with numbers and letters that identify each of the victims as well as
the detention center where they were imprisoned. One purpose: so
military officials who ordered their deaths could have proof "their
orders were carried out," said Crane. Crane — who, as a war-crimes prosecutor for an international
tribunal, brought the indictment against former Liberian President
Charles Taylor — originally reviewed the photos along with two other
international war-crimes prosecutors on behalf of a London law firm
hired by the Qatari government. He then presented the photos for two hours at a session of the
U.N. Security Council in support of a French-sponsored resolution
authorizing an international war-crimes tribunal for Syria in April.
View gallery
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Syrian Army defector Caesar, (in a blue hooded jacket) who has smuggled out of Syria more than 50,000 photographs …
After
his presentation was complete, Crane said, the Security Council fell
silent. The U.S. ambassador, Samantha Power, "was blinking back tears,"
said Crane. (A spokesman for Power did not respond to a request for
comment. But in a statement at the time, Power said, "Nobody who sees these images will ever be the same.") But the French resolution was vetoed by the Russian and Chinese
representatives. That has left Rapp with what he acknowledges are
"jurisdictional challenges" in bringing war-crimes charges against the
regime officials responsible for the dead bodies. (A finding that
U.S. nationals are among the victims could help overcome some of those
challenges by allowing a Justice Department prosecution in U.S. courts.) But Rapp said he is not deterred. His office is working with an
international team of investigators — under the direction of a private
group called the Syria Justice and Accountability Project — to collect
documents and other witness testimony that can be used to corroborate
the photos. (The U.S. is also supporting a separate team of
investigators developing evidence of war crimes by the Islamic State
militant group.)
The
U.S. government has contributed $1 million to the effort to investigate
the Assad regime's abuses. And already, Rapp said, some documents
showing orders to arrest particular detainees have been uncovered.
Investigators are seeking to determine if those orders can be matched up
with the bodies of detainees seen in the photographs.
But
there is still much more work to be done. Because many of the photos
had to be compressed by Caesar to get them to fit on thumb drives,
crucial metadata — which would yield the precise date and time that each
image was recorded — was lost. Confirming the deaths of detainees shown
in the photos with family members who are still inside Syria is also a
problem.
Still, Rapp said, "we are laying the foundation for the day
when there will be accountability. This is the kind of evidence that can
support prosecution of people all the way to the top."
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