The UN Security Council was to meet privately yesterday to view projected slides of Syria’s war dead, who offer mute testimony to the savagery of a conflict in which more than 150,000 have died.
The bodies of the young men in the photographs are emaciated, their bones protruding, but starvation was only one form of torture they endured. Some bear the marks of strangulation, while others have vivid bruises and welts.
France, which is hosting the closed-door meeting, says the photographs are part of a collection of 55,000 digital images of Syrians tortured and slain by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Photo: AFP
France says a majority of them were collected by a Syrian military police photographer code-named “Caesar,” who smuggled them out on flash drives when he defected.
The Syrian Ministry of Justice dismissed the photos and accompanying report as “politicized and lacking objectiveness and professionalism,” a “gathering of images of unidentified people, some of whom turned out to be foreigners.”
It said some of the people were militants killed in battle and others were killed by militant groups.
The presentation is part of a process of documenting evidence of Syrian war crimes in the hope of eventually referring the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. However, that is unlikely, as Syria never accepted the jurisdiction of the court so the only way a case can be opened while al-Assad is in power is for the council to order a referral.
Russia and China have used their veto power three times to block resolutions threatening sanctions on Syria. The hope is that they will eventually agree to a court referral if a resolution names both Syrian government officials and rebels as war crimes perpetrators, according to a Western diplomat.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has been pushing the council to refer Syria to the court for three years, but Security Council President Joy Ogwu has said there is no consensus.
Still, France’s UN mission said in a statement that yesterday’s meeting “will also allow a discussion on the means to ensure accountability for these crimes.”
Pillay said last week that abuses by both the Syrian government and rebels should be documented and brought to the international court.
However, she added: “You cannot compare the two. Clearly, the actions of the forces of the government ... killings, cruelty, persons in detention, disappearances, far outweigh those by the opposition.”
Ten of the photos were released to the public in January in a study known as the “Caesar Report” and funded by the government of Qatar, one of the countries most deeply involved in the Syrian conflict and a major backer of the opposition.
Two of the authors of the report were also to brief the council: David M. Crane, first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and British forensic pathologist Stuart J. Hamilton. The third author was Sir Geoffrey Nice, lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former republic.
“Caesar” had been a crime scene photographer for the Syrian military, the report says. When the war began, he and his colleagues were reassigned to photograph the tortured bodies of rebels and dissidents, providing proof to the regime that its enemies had been liquidated in detention.
Victims were given a code number and their relatives told that they died of “a heart attack or breathing problems.” Bodies were buried before relatives viewed them.
A relative of “Caesar” who defected early in the war persuaded “Caesar” to collect the images over the next three years, the report says. The report’s authors found “Caesar” to be credible when they debriefed him in January. They said “he made it plain that he had never witnessed a single execution,” though he and his team photographed as many as 50 bodies a day.
In the collection of 55,000 images, each body was photographed four or five times, so the authors estimate that about 11,000 victims are pictured. “Caesar” smuggled almost 27,000 of the images out of the country, the report said, adding that the others came from similar, unnamed sources.
A forensic team said that a representative sample of images showed that 62 percent showed emaciation, 19 percent showed neck injuries and “16 percent showed evidence of ligature marks on the neck.”
“There is 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,” the report said.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
As violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Iran is walking a tightrope by supporting Hezbollah without being dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands. With a focus on easing its isolation and reviving its battered economy, Iran is aware that war could complicate efforts to secure relief from crippling sanctions. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, has intensified, especially after last week’s sabotage on Hezbollah’s communications that killed 39 people. Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon followed, killing hundreds. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket barrages. Despite the surge in
RSS