Al-Assad Has Butchered His Way Past Humanity's Red Line : It Is Time to Deal with Him

There are times when, because I'm a woman, my eyes fill with tears. But, they are at times not tears of grief but, rather, tears of anger...of rage. ~~~~~ The "Syria Report," is a 31-page document commissioned by a London-based law firm for the government of Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups in Syria and repeatedly called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stand trial for war crimes. The report's authors are veterans of war crime prosecutions : Sir Desmond de Silva and David Crane argued war crimes cases related to the 1991 to 2002 civil war in Sierra Leone, while the third author, Sir Geoffrey Nice, led the prosecution of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague. The report is based on the evidence of a defected military police photographer, referred to only as 'Caesar', who along with others reportedly smuggled about 55,000 digital images of some 11,000 dead detainees out of Syria. Caesar said his job was to take photographs of corpses, both to allow a death certificate to be produced and to confirm that execution orders had been carried out. "There could be as many as 50 bodies a day to photograph which require 15 to 30 minutes of work per corpse," he is quoted as saying. He did not claim to have witnessed killings or torture himself. The photographs cover the period from the start of the uprising in March 2011 until August 2013 and show evidence of massive starvation, with many bodies looking like Holocaust victims. Many had been beaten and strangled. Some had their eyes missing and others showed signs of electrocution. All but one were men. Thank God, there were no photos of children, although we know from earlier news reports that young children have been tortured and released, both dead and alive, to their families. The report charges that President Bashar al-Assad's regime is guilty of the "industrial scale" torture and killing of 11,000 detainees. The report was first released in The Guardian newspaper, CNN and Turkey's Anatolia news agency, and you can download it, including many photographs, in English or Arabic at www.amanpour.com or www.theguardian.com. Syria has previously denied torturing detainees but the government had no immediate reaction to the Syria Report. The United Nations human rights office expressed horror Tuesday, saying the allegations must be investigated. "This report is extremely alarming, and the alleged scale of the deaths in detention, if verified, is truly horrifying," Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN rights chief Navi Pillay, told AFP in an email. "Allegations this serious cannot be ignored and further investigation is clearly necessary," he added. Both Pillay's office and an independent commission of inquiry on Syria, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2011, have already documented a number of cases of torture similar to those described in the report, but not on such a large scale. The four-member commission, which includes former war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, has repeatedly accused the Syrian regime of crimes against humanity and war crimes. It has never gained access to Syria, but through more than 2,000 interviews in the surrounding region or by phone or Skype, it concluded that regime forces have applied torture, including electric shocks, cigarette burns, sleep deprivation and mock executions, Colville pointed out. The UN investigators, who found that reported deaths in Syrian custody rose markedly in 2013 have also accused the opposition of war crimes, and Pillay expressed deep concern last week that some anti-government armed groups were increasingly torturing and murdering people in their custody. The report released Tuesday "underlines the importance of independent monitors ... being allowed unfettered access immediately to Syria," Colville said. Fox News quoted British Foreign Secretary William Hague calling the report "further evidence of the systematic violence and brutality being visited upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime. We will continue to press for action on all human rights violations in Syria, and for accountability for those who perpetrate them." A leading human rights group accused the US and other world powers Tuesday of undermining efforts to bring Assad before the International Criminal Court. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the US had focused too strongly on bringing the warring parties together for peace talks at the expense of putting "real pressure" on al-Assad's regime to end atrocities and hold those responsible to account. The group also accused Russia and China of shielding their ally Syria from concrete action at the United Nations, such as arms embargoes."We cannot afford to wait for the distant prospect of a peace accord before the killing of 5,000 civilians a month comes to an end," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told reporters at a press conference as he presented the group's annual report in Berlin : "The mass atrocities being committed in Syria should be a parallel focus of the peace process." The Guardian offered details of the photographing procedure : "The reason for photographing executed persons was twofold. First to permit a death certificate to be produced without families requiring to see the body, thereby avoiding the authorities having to give a truthful account of their deaths; second to confirm that orders to execute individuals had been carried out." The Guardian says that families were told that the cause of death was either a "heart attack" or "breathing problems"....The procedure for documentation was that when a detainee was killed each body was given a reference number which related to that branch of the security service responsible for his detention and death. When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital. Once the bodies were photographed, they were taken for burial in a rural area." Three experienced forensic science experts examined and authenticated samples of 55,000 digital images comprising about 11,000 victims. "Overall there was evidence that a significant number of the deceased were emaciated and a significant minority had been bound and/or beaten with rod-like objects," the report says. One of the three authors, David Crane, said: "Now we have direct evidence of what was happening to people who had disappeared. This is the first provable, direct evidence of what has happened to at least 11,000 human beings who have been tortured and executed and apparently disposed of. This is amazing. This is the type of evidence a prosecutor looks for and hopes for. We have pictures, with numbers that marry up with papers with identical numbers - official government documents. We have the person who took those pictures. That's beyond-reasonable-doubt-type evidence." A US administration official told the Guardian on Monday: "We stand with the rest of the world in horror at these images which have come to light. We condemn in the strongest possible terms...." ~~~~~ Dear readers, we have listened for almost three years to Western leaders explain why nothing can be done to help the people of Syria. While Barack Obama drew and erased lines in the sand, and while the UN and Europe waited to see whether there was an actual line, al-Assad systematically tortured and killed 11,000 of his own citizens, while bombing and launching drone and chemical attacks to kill 100,000 and displace 2.5 million Syrians not consigned to the dungeons. That elusive Obama line in the sand provided a convenient background for al-Assad and his henchmen to torture, kill, bomb and invite Iran to join in the affair. And now, with the Syria Report and 55,000 photographs of dead torture victims, what are the UN and the US planning in response? They are asking for access to al-Assad's dungeons. Question : would the Allies have asked Hitler for access to the concentration camps?? What should we do? Blockade Syria. Boycott the Sochi Olympics to force Putin to stop the torture. Exclude China and Russia from all UN committees until they vote to sanction al-Assad at the Security Council. Stop exports of Iranian petroleum and swaps to both Russia and China. And in America, Congress must stand up for the Syrian people against the cynical indifference of Obama. We hear that we do not understand the religious and sectarian nature of Middle East wars. But we are human beings. We understand how other human beings must be treated. If we do not step up to our human obligations, we will become the Germans in the book, "Hitler's Willing Exrcutioners." There actually is a line in the sand, drawn by mankind. Al-Assad has butchered his way far past that red line. It is time to deal with him. "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." __from Meditation17 by John Donne.