SMUGGLED IMAGES TELL OF TORTURE AND DEATH
I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE SEEN PICTURES OF BODIES THAT WERE SUBJECTED TO SUCH CRIMINALITY, EXCEPT WHEN I SAW THE PICTURES OF THE NAZI REGIME. — ‘CAESAR’ MANY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS SHOW EMACIATED BODIES ...
Hidden in the heel of a shoe, thousands of photos of detainees who died while in the custody of President Bashar Assad’s security apparatus were smuggled out of Syria two years ago by a military defector codenamed Caesar.
An investigation into those images, released Wednesday, has concluded they are proof that prisoners have been tortured, starved and beaten “in a systematic way and on a massive scale” at Syrian government detention centres.
“We have meticulously verified dozens of stories and we are confident the Caesar photographs present authentic and damning evidence of crimes against humanity in Syria,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch.
The digital photos are a grim catalogue of the fates of 6,786 Syrians — among them pro-democracy demonstrators, student activists and about 100 boys — who were taken into custody by military intelligence between 2011 and 2013.
They offer a glimpse of the crimes of Syria’s notorious state security machine, which operates largely in secrecy, in contrast to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which broadcasts its atrocities in online propaganda videos.
Caesar was a crime scene photographer for the Syrian military police, but after the civil war started he was tasked with taking pictures of deceased detainees as part of a record-keeping effort that appears designed to hide the regime’s victims in plain sight.
Instead of dumping bodies in mass graves that could later be used as evidence of war crimes, the regime photographed every dead captive, assigned them numbers and had doctors concoct fake causes of death so they could one day be accounted for.
Although their families knew only that they were missing, Caesar saw through his camera lens the signs of torture on their bodies — the broken teeth, gouged-out eyes, burns and marks left by lashings with car battery jumper cables.
“I have never in my life seen pictures of bodies that were subjected to such criminality, except when I saw the pictures of the Nazi regime,” he testified to the U.S. Congress. “My work ethic, my morals, my religion did not allow me to be quiet.”
Instead of fleeing right away, Caesar began a risky spy operation. When he was alone at the office, he would copy the images onto portable USB sticks, which he hid in the heel of his shoe or tucked into his belt until he could pass them to a friend.
“We wanted to get these photos out so that the dead people’s families would know that their loved ones had passed away,” he told The Guardian. “People had to know what was going on in the prisons and detention centres.”
By the time he defected in August 2013, Caesar had smuggled out more than 53,000 images. They were given to the opposition Syrian National Movement, which shared them with human rights investigators. The UN Security Council has also viewed them.
“These photographs represent just a fraction of people who have died while in Syrian government custody — thousands more are suffering the same fate,” said Houry, calling on Syrian intelligence to stop the disappearances.
Physicians for Human Rights experts who analyzed some of the photos found “evidence of violent blunt force trauma, suffocation, starvation” and gunshot wounds, the report said. “Many of the photographs show emaciated bodies as well as marks of torture.”
Researchers were able to identify 27 of those in the photos and document their arrests by Syrian intelligence. They included Rehab al-Allawi, a Damascus University engineering student activist who helped civilians fleeing Homs.
After she was arrested on Jan. 17, 2013, by a military police unit called the Raids Brigade, her family paid more than US$18,000 to Syrian officials to secure her release before being informed she had died of a “stroke.”
But they were later told she was still alive. A military officer wanted $90,000 to arrange her release. Her family paid a middleman in Istanbul and was informed al-Allawi was in Lebanon. Caesar’s photo of the 25-year-old put the matter to rest. In the picture, a length of tape stuck to her forehead reads “215 Branch,” the name of a military intelligence unit known as the “Branch of Death.”