'Clear evidence' of systematic torture in Syria

A Syrian military police photographer has supplied “clear evidence” showing the systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detaineesA Syrian military police photographer has supplied “clear evidence” showing the systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees in circumstances that evoked Nazi death camps, euronews.com reports.

Over 55,000 postmortem images provided by the photographer, who fled Syria after passing the pictures to Assad’s opponents, show emaciated and mutilated corpses.

Bearing signs of torture, some of the corpses had no eyes. Others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.

Three prominent international war crimes experts said they had received the huge cache of photographs documenting the killing of some 11,000 detainees by Syrian authorities.

The photographs inspired a Qatari-funded report “into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime.”

Qatar is one of the countries backing the Syrian opposition – therefore the findings of the report cannot be independently confirmed by euronews.

Professor David Crane, report co-author, said: “It hasn’t been since World War II and the Nuremberg trials that we have seen this kind of cinical industrialised documentation of the deaths of human beings,” he said. These people were starved, beaten, tortured and then executed. People who did this should be ashamed and should be prosecuted,” Professor Crane continued.

Sir Desmond de Silva, who also co-authored the report, told The Associated Press that the photos provide strong evidence for charging Assad and others with crimes against humanity.