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pampango

(24,692 posts)
Thu Oct 1, 2015, 10:26 AM Oct 2015

‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine.Caesar, the Syrian military photographer

who smuggled shocking evidence of torture out of Assad’s 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-Assad’s 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 someone’s 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 they’d 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.
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‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine.Caesar, the Syrian military photographer (Original Post) pampango Oct 2015 OP
No doubt, Putin will defend Assad. Those ports are more important than tortured prisoners. DetlefK Oct 2015 #1
Saddam was terrible too n2doc Oct 2015 #2
The US didn't invade Syria. NuclearDem Oct 2015 #3
No, we just drove a million of so Iraqi refugees there n2doc Oct 2015 #4
Never once did I say the disastrous Iraq War didn't play a role in it. NuclearDem Oct 2015 #5
"And the US sent prisoners to Syria TO BE TORTURED". Indeed we did. Assad was no enemy. pampango Oct 2015 #6
 

NuclearDem

(16,184 posts)
3. The US didn't invade Syria.
Thu Oct 1, 2015, 11:48 AM
Oct 2015

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)
4. No, we just drove a million of so Iraqi refugees there
Thu Oct 1, 2015, 11:53 AM
Oct 2015

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)
5. Never once did I say the disastrous Iraq War didn't play a role in it.
Thu Oct 1, 2015, 11:59 AM
Oct 2015

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)
6. "And the US sent prisoners to Syria TO BE TORTURED". Indeed we did. Assad was no enemy.
Thu Oct 1, 2015, 12:14 PM
Oct 2015

He tortured people on our behalf - and many, many more on his own behalf.

Are the Iraqis better off now? How about Libya?

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.
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