WARNING: Graphically Violent Images
Parental Discretion Advised
The Obama Administration refuses to hold accountable those in the Bush Administration who publicly (no less) cozied up to torture and resorted to extraordinary rendition when they didn’t want to be seen getting their own hands dirty–farming out the torture often conducted in secret (CIA) U.S. prisons abroad to regimes infamous for their handiwork in this regard. Ironically, among the most notorious was the Assad Regime in Syria, the very government U.S. politicians now publicly condemn while our security apparatus secretly confers with Syrian government officials on containing the rebel forces–particularly those with links to Al Qaida factions who now appear to be the strongest contenders among those who would overthrown the vicious Assad government, substituting their own brand of religious oppression and violence toward women or any others who offend/oppose them.
The not so secret dirty truth is President George W. Bush, in some respects, out did Hitler as not even the Fuhrer publicly condoned and cozied up to torture despite a litany of hushed atrocities and crimes against humanity. But, Cheny and Bush are themselves war criminals who authorized untold numbers of crimes against humanity. Those who exposed these crimes, like Manning and Snowden, were pursued and persecuted for it. They were condemned by the U.S. government (and Obama himself) for doing what we properly condemned and executed Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg for NOT doing! Like the German Jews who refused to believe their fellow citizens were capable of such vicious sadistic wholesale murders, many Americans are loathe to think of their elected leaders as torturers and war criminals. Like Hitler, they remain popular among their constituents.
Starved, tortured then throttled: The true horror of how Assad’s soldiers execute rebel prisoners is revealed in new images
- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
- A second cache of photos of victims of torture has been released
- Taken by man tasked with ‘recording deaths in custody’ by Syrian regime
- Total of 55,000 photos which lawyers say are evidence of extreme torture
- Could be used to bring charges of war crimes against Bashar al-Assad
The Agony of being Syrian
by Sara Malm
More photographs showing the maimed bodies of alleged victims of ‘systematic killings’ in Syrian prisons have been released today.
The second cache of photos paints an even clearer image of the horrendous conditions and gruesome torture in government-run jails in Syria.
The images, some of the 55,000 leaked by a witness ‘tasked with recording deaths in custody’, were taken between 2011 and 2013.
The Meek Inheriting the Earth
The second release echoes warnings from human right’s experts earlier this week that the first set of images only showed the tip of the iceberg.
The pictures were smuggled out of Syria by a military police photographer, who has been saving the files over two years, and handed to the opposition.
More…
- Al Qaeda leader calls for peace in Syria… among the rival rebel groups trying to depose Assad
- After nearly three years and 100,000 deaths, Syria peace conference begins in Switzerland with a bitter clash over President Assad’s future
- Syrian regime ‘torture’ photographs could be the tip of the iceberg, warn human rights experts: Hague says those responsible for ‘horrific crimes’ must be brought to justice
- British student arrested at Heathrow ‘had £16,000 hidden in her knickers for Syrian fighters’
When the first photographs were released earlier this week, they were described as ‘clear evidence’ of crimes against humanity by a team of war crimes prosecutors.
They show emaciated corpses with strangulation marks, cuts, bruising and signs of electrocution – evidence of extreme torture, claim investigators. Some victims are shown to have had their eyes removed.
The photographer served as a military police officer for 13 years, and was assigned the duty of documenting the dead bodies brought to the military hospitals controlled by the Syrian regime during the civil war.
Faces of Death
The Anonymity of being Tortured to Death
Sun Bathing
Torture: When Death Proves Inadequate — “We had to know what they were thinking!” -G. W. Bush-
The bodies depicted in the photographs are all said to be members of rebel groups killed in detention under torture and starvation.
They show handwritten notes by officials on the faces and the bodies of the corpses, and allegedly used by the Syrian army as the records of death sentence enforcement, carried out systematically in government-run prisons.
On Tuesday Foreign Secretary William Hague, as well as the U.S. government, condemned the crimes shown in the photographs, and demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice.
Mr Hague described the images as ‘compelling and horrific’, and said: ‘It is important those who have perpetrated these crimes are one day held to account.’
A spokesman from the U.S. State Department said: ‘These reports suggest widespread and apparently systematic violations by the regime. These most recent images … are extremely disturbing. They’re horrible to look at.’
The initial 31-page report was commissioned by Carter-Ruck solicitors in London on behalf of the Qatari government, which supports the Syrian uprising.
It was released as peace talks began in Switzerland on Wednesday to try to end the three-year conflict.
The Swells Dither
Like their American cousins, Syrian supporters give their President a pass.
The Devil Wears Prada
Sir Desmond de Silva, one of the Carter-Ruck lawyers who compiled a report on the credibility of the images, said that the evidence ‘documented industrial-scale killing.’ He pointed out that because the images purport to come from just one part of Syria, the human rights abuses could be much more widespread.
‘This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn’t have before. It makes a very strong case indeed,’ he said.
‘It is the tip of the iceberg because this is 11,000 in just one area.’
About 130,000 people have been killed and a quarter of Syrians driven from their homes in the civil war, which began with peaceful protests against 40 years of Assad family rule and has descended into a sectarian conflict, with the opposing sides armed and funded by Sunni Arab states and Shi’ite Iran.
High-level mediating has yielded little so far, but Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator who is meeting separately today with each Syrian delegation, said there are signs they might be willing to bend on humanitarian aid, ceasefires and prisoner exchanges.
Amid hostile exchanges at the peace talks in Switzerland, Syria’s government ridiculed demands by opposition leaders and their Western backers including Britain for Assad to stand down, saying it would never happen.
Equal Opportunity
The rent thin veil of civilization
When Death Comes as a Blessing
