General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine.Caesar, the Syrian military photographer
who smuggled shocking evidence of torture out of Assads dungeons, tells his story for the first time.
For two years, between 2011 and 2013, the former Syrian military photographer known only as Caesar used a police computer in Damascus to copy thousands of photographs of detainees who were tortured to death in Bashar al-Assads jails. The media have run numerous stories about the man who managed to smuggle astonishing evidence of crimes against humanity out of the country at great risk to himself and his family but he had never been interviewed.
Month after month, for two years, this man, who has remained anonymous, took photographs of tortured, starved and burnt bodies. His orders were to photograph the bodies in order to document prisoners deaths. He then secretly made copies and transferred them on to USB keys so that he could smuggle them out of his office, hidden in his shoes or his belt, and pass them to a friend who could get them out of the country.
The terrorists of Islamic State proclaim their atrocities on social networks; the Syrian state hides its misdeeds in the silence of its dungeons. Before Caesar, no insider had supplied evidence of the existence of the Syrian death machine. And these photos and documents were damning.
I had never seen anything like it. Before the uprising, the regime tortured prisoners to get information; now they were torturing to kill. I saw marks left by burning candles, and once the round mark of a stove the sort you use to heat tea that had burned someones face and hair. Some people had deep cuts, some had their eyes gouged out, their teeth broken, you could see traces of lashes with those cables you use to start cars. There were wounds full of pus, as if theyd been left untreated for a long time and had got infected. Sometimes the bodies were covered with blood that looked fresh. It was clear they had died very recently.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/they-were-torturing-to-kill-inside-syrias-death-machine-caesar
ISIS may indeed be worse now but it is understandable why people were fed up with the Assad regime back in 2011.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)Are the Iraqis better off now? How about Libya? Our interventions have only made things worse.
And the US sent prisoners to Syria TO BE TORTURED
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0416/What-US-did-to-terrorism-suspects-after-9-11-was-torture-report-finds
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Syrians protested the Assad government, then starting defending themselves when that government started butchering them.
Crushing dissent and uprisings never permanently works. All it does is come back to bite the people who did so extremely hard.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Making an already strained situation untenable. And some of those refugees had ties to the former Iraqi army, and became the core of ISIL.
But pretend that it is all Assad's fault. I am sure you sleep better with that thought.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)But it wasn't what caused the Arab Spring to spread to Syria.
But if it helps you sleep at night, yes, the Syrian Civil War is entirely the meany-pants United States' fault, and no, you are not supporting the violent crushing of a popular uprising.
pampango
(24,692 posts)He tortured people on our behalf - and many, many more on his own behalf.
Our policy should be: don't support dictators; don't overthrow dictators; don't interfere when citizens in small countries ruled by dictators take matters into their own hands.