dagblog - Comments for "Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges"

Syria Photo Archive Seems

artappraiser — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 09:02:42 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

Syria Photo Archive Seems Unlikely to Alter U.S. Policy
By Mark Landler and Ben Hubbard, New York Times, Jan. 22/23, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration first learned last November about a harrowing trove of photographs that were said to document widespread torture and executions in Syrian prisons when a State Department official viewed some of the images on a laptop belonging to an antigovernment activist, a senior official said Wednesday.

The United States did not act on the photos for the past two months, officials said, because it did not have possession of the digital files and could not establish their authenticity. Nevertheless, they said, the administration believes the photos are genuine, basing that assessment in part on the meticulous way in which the bodies in the photos were numbered.

The photographs, some of which were released this week on the eve of an international peace conference on Syria, have helped prompt the administration to heighten its demand that President Bashar al-Assad release political prisoners and allow Red Cross inspectors access to the prisons.

But it seems clear that the photos that appear to document the torture and executions will not fundamentally alter American policy, which is to push for a political settlement that will remove Mr. Assad from power but to avoid direct military intervention in the conflict [....]

For now, the White House and the State Department are expressing outrage over the images, even as they caution that the United States has not independently authenticated them [....]

Syrian officials said the photographs had been fabricated, either by the opposition or by Persian Gulf countries. “They have been fabricating such images for the last three years, and this is not new to us,” said Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mekdad, in an interview in Montreux. The publication of the photos, he added, had no effect on the talks.

Russia’s prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said in an interview with CNN that no conclusions could be drawn about the photos.

“I know there are a lot of victims, and that’s very sad, but that does not mean that the existence of victims or victims in a particular place is the proof that those are the victims of the regime and not the bandits who were doing something or any other force,” Mr. Medvedev said. [....]

Thanks for staying on top

rmrd0000 — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 23:09:59 +0000

In reply to It's still too early to tell.

Thanks for staying on top these issues.

It's still too early to tell.

artappraiser — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 22:15:04 +0000

In reply to How will this information

It's still too early to tell. The involvement of Qatar in breaking the story makes for prudence along the lines of stories of Saddam's soldiers taking away baby incubators in Kuwait and WMD's in Iraq, even though the three prosecutors investigating the evidence seem to be widely highly regarded and respected.

Right now everyone can agree and deplore that war crimes are being committed on all sides.

It's important to watch how this develops as the conference gets on, how the parties react.

As to Hersh, I have learned over the years that he should be treated as any other good reporter with knowledgeable anonymous sources. The deification of him by some on the left as if he is a teller of truth is wrong headed, something I think that even he would disagree with. He gets interesting info. because he has good connections and he tries to report that info to the world with cavaet emptor status. I.E., just because someone with inside info. tells him about U.S. or Israeli military contingency plans for attacking Iran doesn't necessarily mean that it's likely to happen, and perhaps he is even being used for secondary effect when he gets such info.

US and UN express horror at

artappraiser — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 22:02:03 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

US and UN express horror at Syria torture report
BBC News, Jan. 21, 2014

The US and UN have reacted with "horror" to allegations in a new report that Syria has systematically tortured and executed about 11,000 detainees since the start of the uprising.

The US said the reports underscored the need to remove the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

A Syrian spokesman said the report had no credibility as it was commissioned by Qatar, which funds rebel groups.

The report comes a day before peace talks are due to begin in Switzerland.

Delegations are now arriving for the talks, known as Geneva II, which open in Montreux on Wednesday, and continue in Geneva two days late [....]

How will this information

rmrd0000 — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 21:57:57 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

How will this information impact Seymour Hersh's story that Obama lied about Assad gassing Syrians?

Systematic killing evidence

artappraiser — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 21:52:03 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

Systematic killing evidence in Syria just tip of iceberg - aid agencies
International bodies say evidence of execution of 11,000 detainees in regime jails comes from just one area of Syria

By Martin Chulov, theguardian.com, 21 Jan. 2014 13.46 EST

The cache of evidence smuggled out of Syria showing the "systematic killing" of 11,000 detainees in Syrian jails may only be the tip of the iceberg, international aid agencies have said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, various United Nations bodies and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly complained of having next to no access to detainees and being stone-walled by Syrian authorities despite repeated requests to visit infamous detention sites, such as Sayednaya prison in Damascus.

They said Monday's report by three eminent international lawyers that at least 11,000 victims have been killed while in detention represents numbers in only one part of the country.

"All I know after years of trying to get access is that this is likely to eventually shock the world," one senior official from an international body told the Guardian, on condition of anonymity. "What we have seen in the [war crimes lawyers'] report broadly reflects what we have pieced together over the past few years." [....]

CNN's version, partner with

artappraiser — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 09:04:22 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

CNN's version, partner with The Guardian on the "exclusive":

EXCLUSIVE: Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad regime
By Mick Krever and Schams Elwazer, CNN, Jan. 20, 2014

[....] 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." [.....]

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." [....]

Talks Over Syria to Begin as

artappraiser — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 05:47:54 +0000

In reply to Exclusive: Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges

Talks Over Syria to Begin as Iran Sits on the Sidelines

By Michael R. Gordon and Anne Barnard, New York Times, Jan. 20, 2014, 11:00 PM

Under pressure from the United States, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, rescinded Iran’s invitation a day after he offered it, a move that had threatened to unravel the peace talks.