https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/27/assad-syria-atrocities-regime-photographed-murdered
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The key documents are from the head of detention facility 227 to one of the regime’s senior intelligence chiefs, the head of military intelligence, informing him of the arrest, interrogation and deaths of detainees, and crucially, referring to their dead bodies with a number. When the investigators cross-checked these body numbers in the regime documents, with the corpse numbers and detention facility numbers displayed on bodies in the Caesar photographs, they matched. So not only do we have the Caesar photographs of thousands of corpses bearing marks of torture and starvation, we now have documents which appear to link the Syrian regime to some of the people in the photographs, and to their deaths. The photographs captured one moment in time, depicting the state of the detainees’ bodies. But the documents name the detainees, and talk about them from the time they were arrested, to the details gleaned from their interrogation, to the day they died, and finally, to what should be done with their bodies – confirming all of it happened in regime custody.
For example, among the Caesar photographs, corpse 2668, detention facility 227, is an emaciated man who appears to have had one eye gouged out. In the documents, he has a name, a village where he came from, the date he was arrested, what he confessed to during his interrogation, his death, and the cause given: “his heart and breathing stopping”. Somewhere he has a family, but the head of detention facility 227 didn’t recommend returning his body to them.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/syria-chemical-weapons-assad-trump/557483/
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This weekend, it appears, Assad’s regime struck again. Fighters in Douma refused a one-sided ceasefire agreement, and haven’t buckled despite years of starvation siege warfare and indiscriminate bombing. In what has become a familiar chain of events, the regime groomed public opinion by airing accusations that the rebels might organize a false-flag chemical attack in order to attract international sympathy. An apparent chemical attack followed, killing at least 25 and wounding more than 500, according to unconfirmed reports from rescue workers and the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. The Syrian government and the Russians have once again blamed the rebels, knowing that it will take months before solid evidence emerges, by which point most attention will have turned elsewhere. The pattern is by now predictable. In all likelihood, solid, independent evidence will soon emerge linking the attacks to the Syrian regime.
Assad already has unraveled the global taboo against chemical weapons, in the process exposing the incoherence of the international community. Syria has exposed the international liberal order as a convenient illusion. Western bromides of “never again” meant nothing when a determined dictator with hefty international backers committed crimes against humanity.
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However, given the unfathomable suffering that has beset the Syrian people at the hands of this brutal regime, the unwillingness of the international community to threaten action unless the Islamic State (ISIS) or chemical weapons are involved (and even then, only selectively) is doing much more harm than good. In all the current discussions about next steps, one element is noticeably and consistently absent: Syria’s civilians, who for the past several years have lived in a terrifying hell on Earth, often unable to leave their houses. In December, the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimated that the regime had dropped nearly 70,000 barrel bombs since July 2012 — and sometimes forced people to watch as children slowly starved to death.
Assad knows he will not be punished for the myriad war crimes and crimes against humanity that his regime has committed. The International Mechanism gathering evidence for a trial that may or may not take place in the future is probably a source of great amusement to a dictator who for the past eight years has been allowed to operate with impunity.
Article:
https://nypost.com/2018/03/31/assad-and-his-allies-endless-atrocities/
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Assad’s forces aren’t the only butchers, but they’ve led the way from the start, when government troops began waging war on peaceful demonstrators back in the spring of 2011.
Regime tactics regularly include mass executions as well as rape (of both sexes), forced prostitution, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy, plus genital mutilation, torture and murder of prisoners in government detention centers.
Assad’s planes, with Russian help, have routinely bombed schools and hospitals — to the point where their opponents no longer mark medical facilities because it guarantees they’ll be targeted.
