Talk:Torture Photos from "Caesar"

Press reactions

 * Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of 'industrial scale' killing of detainees – Ian Black, The Guardian, 21 January 2014
 * ''Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers.
 * ''The authors are Sir Desmond de Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, and Professor David Crane, who indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia at the Sierra Leone court.


 * Syria 'Industrial' Killing: Report Details Deaths Of 11,000 In Assad Jails – Reuters, 01/21/2014
 * ''A Syrian military police photographer has supplied "clear evidence" showing the systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees in circumstances that evoked Nazi death camps, former war crimes prosecutors said.


 * ''The images he took were passed to the Syrian National Movement, which is supported by the Gulf state of Qatar. Lawyers acting for Qatar, London-based Carter-Ruck and Co., commissioned the examination of the evidence.


 * ''The three former prosecutors, who worked at the criminal war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined the evidence and interviewed the source in three sessions in the last 10 days. They found him credible.


 * Torture in Syria: Photos may be proof of 'industrial-scale killing' carried out by Assad regime – Kunal Dutta, The Independent, 21 January 2014
 * ''Lawyers acting for the Arab state of Qatar claim to have evidence smuggled out of Syria that shows the “systemic killing” of about 11,000 Syrian detainees at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
 * ''The allegations, contained in a 31-page report released yesterday to coincide with the Geneva II talks, were described as a “smoking gun” that could see Syrian officials charged with war crimes.


 * Photo Archive Is Said to Show Widespread Torture in Syria – New York Times, Jan. 21, 2014
 * ''Emaciated corpses lie in the sand, their ribs protruding over sunken bellies, their thighs as thin as wrists. Several show signs of strangulation. The images conjure memories of some of history’s worst atrocities.
 * ''Numbers inscribed on more than 11,000 bodies in 55,000 photographs said to emerge from the secret jails of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, suggest that torture, starvation and execution are widespread and even systematic, each case logged with bureaucratic detail.


 * Call Him Caesar - Inside The Syrian Torture Photos Worldcrunch, calling on a Le Monde report, Jan. 24.
 * Qatar was well aware that its unequivocal opposition to Bashar al-Assad might jeopardize the credibility of the final report, so it accepted to finance the study on condition that "the evidence is properly and rigorously authenticated," says Cameron Doley, one of the lawyers of the firm.
 * The experts buried themselves in the flow of pictures and grew convinced that "it was very unlikely" that they could have been forged. During the month of January, they met with "Caesar" on three occasions, asking question after question, eventually confirming that the man is indeed who he claims to be.
 * Although he supported the anti-Assad uprising, "Caesar" "gave an honest account of his experiences," according to the report, adding that he never pretended to have witnessed the executions.
 * ... (Activist) Emadeddin Rachid showed Le Monde a scanned copy of a death file made of "Caesar's" pictures. The form carried the heading of the "Syrian Arab Republic, General Command of the army" and on the postmortem pictures, the seal "Military Police" is affixed.


 * ... "Caesar" and his companions now dream of the day when they can hand the photographs to an international court. "If justice doesn't take over and doesn't do what needs to be done after such massacres, then you can bet that there will be counter-massacres," Rachid warns.


 * Syria 'smoking gun' report warrants a careful read – Dan Murphy, January 21, 2014
 * ''The report by former war crimes prosectors alleges the Syrian regime has tortured 11,000 prisoners. The claim is credible, but don't forget the agenda.


 * ''Which leaves me feeling kind of awkward about a report released Monday that alleges 11,000 prisoners have been tortured, starved, or otherwise beaten to death in Syrian government custody since 2011. It's a believable assertion based on what is known about Syrian government practice and the conduct of the war. But the report itself is nowhere near as credible as it makes out and should be viewed for what it is: A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar, a regime opponent who has funded rebels fighting Assad who have committed war crimes of their own.


 * Syria report: One is reminded of Nazi Germany - Robert Fisk Tuesday 21 January 2014
 * No, that’s not to say that the evidence from Qatar – and we shall come to the matter of Qatar shortly – is not true. But we should be asking a lot more questions than we have been asking about this portrait gallery of pain, unleashed only hours before an international conference in Switzerland in which we in the West – but perhaps not Qatar – hope to end the civil war in Syria.

Rebuttals

 * Torture photos are 'politicized' and 'fake': Syria – Syria 24 English on Facebook
 * ''Syria's Justice Ministry has dismissed a report alleging mass torture and killing by the government as "politicized" depicting the shocking photos in the document "fake".


 * A tale of two reports: Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian – Interventions Watch, January 21, 2014
 * US Feigns "Horror" Over Cooked-Up Report on Syrian War They Engineered – Tony Cartalucci, January 22, 2014


 * AL-Monitor: Syria torture photos: massacre or sabotage scheme? A little "too fair" to the anti-Assad side, but raises questions about the motives for this report.--Caustic Logic (talk) 01:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

April 2014

 * Syria crisis: 'Torture' photos shown to UN Security Council – BBC, 15 April 2014
 * Inside Bashar Assad's torture chambers – Michael Isikoff, October 13, 2014
 * ''Photos to be displayed at U.S. Holocaust Museum are 'smoking gun' evidence of war crimes, State Department official tells Yahoo News

Starting Thoughts

 * ''moved from Other research


 * Crane-Da Silva-Nice Torture Report or Torture Photos from "Caesar": CNN reports "A team of internationally renowned war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts has found "direct evidence" of "systematic torture and killing" by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the lawyers on the team say in a new report." The report: Syria Board of Inquiry Doha PDF (Prepared for Carter-­‐Ruck and Co. Solicitors of London.) The photo with the article shows a man with censored things done to his face and chest, and zero proof who he was or who did it. I'll review the report, but the article summarizes:
 * The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing, according to the report.
 * In a group of photos of 150 individuals examined in detail by the experts, 62% of the bodies showed emaciation -- severely low body weight with a hollow appearance indicating starvation. The majority of all of the victims were men most likely aged 20-40.
 * A complex numbering system was also used to catalog the corpses, with only the relevant intelligence service knowing the identities of the corpses. It was an effort, the report says, to keep track of which security service was responsible for the death, and then later to provide false documentation that the person had died in a hospital.

From highlights: "Defector provided thousands of photographs of victims, a new report states" "The defector, codenamed "Caesar," allegedly photographed as many as 50 bodies a day" (Do ANY of them show normal access to areas rebels couldn't access, like actual staffed prisons? Or is it in all some room, some dirt yard, etc.?) --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Assad killed them...
When I first came across this material on Wednesday night I was horrified. I found the story believable. Well, Western propaganda is effective. Even if you have built defenses against all five levels of propaganda, from the emotional to the intellectual, something gets through. After being fooled a few times on Libya, I completely stopped following Western mainstream media.

After a night's sleep, everything was clear to me. It has however taken me two days to write anything down, so I will now record my starting thoughts. I have not even read any of the other comments on this page, except for noticing the speculation about the photos being from Libya. It was one of my first thoughts but I find it unlikely.

This is what I think:
 * 1) The photos are real and from Syria, with correct, unfaked EXIF data.
 * 2) The photos show a total of 11,000 dead Syrians.
 * 3) Damascus Military Security Branch 215 operated a government morgue. Everyone killed in the violence or found dead somewhere were taken there for processing, identification and burial or release to relatives.
 * 4) Some of the dead may be government captives, but the major part of the 11,000 bodies came from the open battlefields.
 * 5) As bodies came in from outside government custody, it is impossible to say from the photographs who killed the victim or who was responsible for his torture wounds.

The proof is quite simple. The Qatari sources claim these people are victims of forced disappearance – taken into government custody never to be seen again. However, in the SOHR and other opposition numbers for victims there is no such category for forced disappearance, let alone for 11,000 people disappearing. If the figure of 11,000 bodies from the Damascus area is correct, then these bodies must be from among the 110,000 deaths reported by SOHR. If they are war dead, there is no way of knowing the provenance of the body. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

P.S. – As to the three clowns comparing this to Nazi death camps... A far better comparison for their claims would be the US-led Operation Condor in South America.


 * Great thought exercise. When you hear numbers so huge, it seems either that's exaggerated, or something like this. The prominence of likely combat deaths is not clear. Neither is it clear how representative the photos chosen for publication were. But those show non-combat stuff, captivity and torture (infacted shackle-marks, etc.) so we've at least got a bit of a mix going on. As for tortured captives and combat zones, there's the possibility of finding tortured corpses inside an overrun rebel HQ, for example, and processing those alongside the killed defenders and maybe even your own slain soldiers, and anyone they did in fact murder in captivity, or who died in captivity. And that's besides those routinely just dumped by the side of the road so the activists can report "the martyr's body was taken to the National/Mezzeh Hospital and handed back to his family today by authorities, with signs of torture."


 * So, yeah, I can see this - he did that job, at that place, and smuggled out the photos somehow - and all it proves is a lot of people are dying in various ways around Damascus since the cool idea of regime change became the policy of several hostile nations peaceful protests began in 2011. These would/might (?) largely be processed in Mezzeh Military hospital, where I read he worked. The metadata might be consistent with that but, as we discussed, that could be true or false. The dishonest addition would the impression given by "Caesar" that all had been abused detainees somewhere previously. It would explain a lot, including things we don't have yet (consistent metadata)


 * Without seeing many of the photos, however, I can't say how consistent their locales are with realistic hospital facilities (or get actual facility photos to compare them with). We can't see how many look like combat kills vs. executed, tortured, or just unclear. We can't have teams of people comb the net for matches to see how many of these have been previously reported killed here or there, outside a prison. If your theory is true, there are bound to be at least some of these in such a huge pool. But we can't even start checking that and so ... for me, this a possibility to list and keep in mind, and maybe the single best one yet, but still impossible to rule in or out. And maybe only part of the answer even if true.


 * As for "there is no such category for forced disappearance, let alone for 11,000 people disappearing," the VDC has both a detainees and a missing database, I think even they'd say both woefully inadequate. However, I've skimmed it. Most people detained also have the release date filled in. I doubt the records there could support anything quite like this, but they'd say the unknown numbers don't disallow such a thing. SOHR plays with a big margin of suspected combat deaths twice as high as verified on both sides, for example. An extra 11,000, no problem. Also, the number remains suspect. I doubt that it's rounded down by much, but that's all I can say for it.  --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:19, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm at a point where if they want me to believe they have 55K photos, they have to release them. Period. Given the sources I have no problem believing that this whole story is made up and a "Caesar" doesn't exist. There was next to no effect other than that Kerry and the other clowns had a fresh horror story to mention in their Geneva speeches, so I see no reason to give this much attention. There are four Hitler fingers pointing back at them, for increasing numbers of people clear to see. --CE (talk) 14:38, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Not too far from my stance. --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Another thing about this theory is, unless he took all the original photos from such a long span, "Caesar" should only have copies, meaning his bosses will still have the originals, with files of varying detail attached. If this is how things are, they should be able to easily answer it. Select some best cases, show the same photo we've seen, explain where this guy was killed, what he was doing/why they killed him, where he came from, etc. Give the overall picture as their records show it, explain the starving and torture signs we see, put those in the true context, and generally tear apart the story Caesar handed in stapled to his copies. Somehow, I predict they won't be doing this, only maybe because this isn't the explanation. But I hope it is, and they respond the right way. That would be cool to observe. --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, they have all the same photos and know exactly who Caesar is. If I were the Syrian propaganda minister I would release the whole set with full EXIF-data. Then again, if the demand for prosecution is to be taken at all seriously, it is best to say absolutely nothing. It will only help the prosecution in cocking up new lies. Any counterargument is best presented at The Hague.
 * Successful prosecution of any enemy of the Empire requires that the state structures of the enemy state be first destroyed. A functioning bureaucracy will find out the facts and present the counterargument. The prosecution must first demand that the enemy state be bombed to the stone age – like Libya, or at least its leaders isolated and detached from the state bureaucracy by a color revolution – like Milošević and Yugoslavia. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 15:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * But in support: the Justice Ministry's statement, as CNN reported it, "branded the report "politicized and lacking in objectivity and professionalism" and said some of the photos are of "foreign terrorists."" That's either a guess, or some knowledge of the content. Either way, they're saying it's in Syria. And "It then said any expert "could easily find out that these pictures are fake and that they have no relation to prisoners or detainees in Syrian prisons."" Just defending their turf with a denial, or speaking from knowledge of what the photos do show? --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Continued...
This thread should have more to it. In anticipation, a sub-heading and space. I think I just put this pretty well in a comment at the SOHR Facebook page (where I've been spending too much time, sorry - the comments are getting smarter all the time, and rebel supporters become the trolls). I meant to cut the last part there, but it's okay here. Building off another person's comment:
 * "when (if) most of these victims are murdered and they were photographed by the regime: 1+1=2." Here's a thought exercise - take that statement, switch rebels for regime and consider this with any of the hundreds of videos where they have murdered bodies photographed and put on Youtube. There, rebels say they just found them, and people buy that. Then consider the government of a country, that runs everything from sanitation to diplomacy (both likely relevant here) is at least as capable of finding, processing, and documenting bodies that they didn't necessarily murder themselves in cold blood. We can't responsibly draw the conclusions requested by our esteemed solicitors in London and their clients in Qatar. Not until we can get more information and evidence than a paid defector's possibly fake back story to make this another obvious "regime" crime.

The part about "from sanitation to diplomacy (both likely relevant here)", in case it's unclear, refers to cleaning up and maybe returning (and photographing?) the rotting carcasses of terrorists sent by/from other countries, before the accumulating microbes make the people of Syria ill. I'm not at all sure what portion of the dead may or may not be that type, really, but it was an example range. It's okay, hardly anyone there will come close to getting that anyway. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

On Questions And Answers
BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut said, in the sidebar of this BBC report:
 * Issues of political motivation - the commissioning of the report by Qatar, and its release just before the Geneva talks - should not obscure the reality of the evidence produced.

Many will say this, and I argue the best course is to agree with them and move forward. The reality - or unreality - of the core allegations is what matters here. All those who simply point to the timing, to Qatar, or even (less often) to the prosecutors, and leave it as questioned will not have much effect. Many out there simultaneously see the cynical timing and questionable motives, and the horrible regime crime that makes you almost glad people are using timing tricks and any money/help they can get to take out this bastard Assad. Reinforcing that will do little. I suppose everything one can usually do is in the realm of raising questions, and not proving anything. But more specific questions, with answers narrowed down, can really work a long ways towards that end.

So far, we're about it that's trying (in English, that I see). I've scanned for any reports mentioning metadata, and couldn't (easily) find anything, aside from a comment beneath this Penny for your Thoughts post. Our page isn't appearing in searches yet. Usually we dominate an issue later, once 98% of those who once cared have moved on, and only the scholars remain. :( --Caustic Logic (talk) 06:38, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Three More Photos
They say these were provided by someone in the coalition, exactly three more "Caesar" photos that can be allowed to trickle out, extra gory and upsetting ones, compared to the others. One is an image like those we've seen, a naked starved man with tortured wounds all over the body, in that same dirt shed. Another is a close-up on an emaciated man, elderly, finished off perhaps with popping out his eyes. Everything but that is blurred out, along with all faces, numbers, and anything on the card, perhaps to avoid the danger anyone will be able to discern just who these are pictures of. The third one adds a new level of evidence that bodies in Syria decay after a while, just like anywhere. A badly decomposed body, dumped in water it seems, maybe after they tortured him to death, then waited a month or two to retrieved the body and take their special "it was just a heart attack" photo ... right? --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:19, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Graphic Warning: Further Evidence of Assad Regime's Prison Executions – Michael Weiss, NOW Lebanon, February 6, 2014
 * Why did the activist choose these photos for publication – apart from their massacre porn shock value? They have no forensic value; they tell nothing of the cause of death or identity of the victims.
 * On closer inspection they show something crucially important: Assad's thugs first starved these people to death and then kept the bodies lying in the jail cell for another month just to make sure.
 * ...not really. These bodies have been recovered from somewhere out in the open.
 * The activist argument is based on the premise, that the Assadist facility is air-tight. Nothing ever enters the morgue, except from the well-guarded torture chambers of Assad's prisons. If we allow just a hundred unknown John Does from the dumping ground behind some rebel outpost to enter the pipeline and these were to show torture marks, we can assume that the undisclosed selection process would guarantee that these are the photos shown to the public as "Assad's victims". -- Petri Krohn (talk) 17:40, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. – I think I now know how the activist logic works. They know that all 11,000 victims were collected from the open battlefields, except for a hundred or so, that died in Assad's prisons. They also know that the rebels never torture their prisoners whereas Assad always does. Therefor they can identify the 100 victims with torture marks as the 100 victims from Assad's prisons. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 17:54, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems they goofed up here, with the one photo anyway. Left a good comment there. Actually two - one responding to Syricide. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:17, 15 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I never realized who or what Michael Weiss is. I thought he was some Middle East expert stationed in Lebanon. The fact is he is little more than a Cold War warrior. I would not trust a word he says. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 23:27, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Number of victims?
11,000 murdered and photographed by this one man alone. And this is only one of Assad's numerous torture centers. There must be similar gulags all over Syria, in Homs, Hama, Aleppo... with 10,000 victims each! This guy Assad must be as bad as Hitler! No, worse, he must as bad as STALIN! -- Petri Krohn (talk) 11:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The number of alleged victims is suspect. I doubt he's rounding it down, anyway. It could be about the number, depending of course what really killed all these people, over what area and time span. As we're considering above, maybe this is just all combat dead, some mix of other related dead from both sides, just being processed in one place. Everyone knows tens of thousands of people from both/no sides have been killed in the capitol region. I'm not sure how possible 11,000 is from those imprisoned around there - seems high, but can't rule it out. But there should be more sign if this were an extra 11,000 prisoners no one's counted yet, or half of those known, or anything like that. Imagining holocaust icebergs from this one alleged tip, yeah - that's pretty lazy, stupid thinking. And it's being heartily encouraged, of course.--Caustic Logic (talk) 10:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I didn't have time to pull it together now, but this might be a good spot to also ask how many photos. There's a grand total of 55,000 handed over by the activists, but as I read, only about half - 27,000 - are taken by Caesar. What are the other half and where did they come from and what are they supposed to show? Of the relevant half, there are further subdivisions. Space below will have details later. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:40, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Number of Photos?

I'm not sure a body photographer needs to have a victim's file as he takes file-related photos, where their numbers are already right there. But it seems reasonable. Like image metadata, that's important information beyond the picture proof of "hey a dead guy." Names might have been hidden from him, or often impossible to copy down/remember, or whatever. But it seems to me he might have been able to provide names for many these thousands of detainees if his story is true. It would really make the value of it a whole lot better. But so far I haven't seen any mention of any names being provided anywhere for these crucial victims. It could be that some names would match records of people known to have died in various ways, so they left that file out and it's down to just images of the physical remains. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:50, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Identity of Victims?

Image Analysis
(there may well be some analysis here of the actual images that have been publicized - forthcoming...)

I'm not sure what causes this - men with little knives, or maybe chunks of white phosphorous, or what, but this pitting of peoples' flesh has been seen in some cases (the Daraya massacre at least, and the Hohammed family ) where some clues say the victims were rebel captives, while rebels with access to the bodies insist it was Shabihha who scooped holes, largely in the belly, the arms, and inner thighs. Here' it's Assad jailers allegedly doing it. Further, a careful look suggests this man's throat was sliced wide open, at least on the right side (the rest being unclear). Slicing throats is often an Islamist thing, but here allegedly Assad jailers are doing it too. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Man with carved flesh:

This alleged Assad victim is, by his several visible tattoos, a Christian - not a community known for rising up en masse against the government, and not connected to the supposed genocide of Sunnis "Caesar" claims the photos document. In this view, we see two crucifix patterns on right upper arm - other views (same angle example) show another lower on that arm, and a small cross on the inside of his left wrist. Chances are there are even more crosses on the guy visible from other angles. Aside from an apparent stab in the right shoulder, it's not clear if he was simply starved to death or actually executed. Islamist terrorists often abduct and kill Christians, but here, Assad's jailers are allegedly to blame.--Caustic Logic (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * A Christian Man:

This bearded, elderly man was abducted, starved, and exposed to smoke inhalation prior to death (the nostrils are black - see the same with the Alawite civilians taken captive by rebels in Aqrab, December 2012, and at least one victim starved in rebel-held Yarmouk in early 2014. Closer to the end, it looks like his eyeballs were gouged out of their sockets, left hanging loose. Islamists sometimes do that to infidels, whose corpses the goivernment might later find. Or as alleged, the government might do this themselves to avoid the wait. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Old man with gouged eyes:

This is another alleged victim of Assad torture, perhaps believed to be some kind of extreme waterboarding (??). It's so severe the person almost looks like the victim of a terrorist kidnap-murder, dumped in a creek face-down, and only found a week or two later. Maybe they didn't get their ransom. Or maybe they did and didn't care. But allegedly, Assad jailers executed him/her, then ... maybe ... dumped the body somewhere moist and retrieved it later? Signs: badly broken jaw, one eye missing, possible hole in throat. It's hard to divorce these from decay/predation and call it a certain feature of torture/execution, but they could be. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Decayed Victim:

Metadata

 * ''Moved from

No sign whatsoever of forensic examination of the digital media - the jpeg file data as compared to what they portray. This is normal procedure. EXIF data would show actual image dates - not the file dates you normally see, plus usually the camera model and sometimes serial number and GPS coordinates. Failure to do this basic and very easy check indicates to me they didn't want to know the answer. At this stage the images could easily have been from Qatari prisons or more likely from Libya.

I'm reminded of the Mandy Rice Davies quote "He would [say that], wouldn't he" --Charles Wood (talk) 01:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

EXIF Data and Sniffing Out Rats

 * ''Moved to Category talk:Investigation

Signs of Willful Avoidance
It seems plike no one promoting this photograph proof of an "Assad crime" has actually checked the metadata.

As the BBC reported, the UN's people haven't had a chance to verify:
 * Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, told AFP: "This report is extremely alarming, and the alleged scale of the deaths in detention, if verified, is truly horrifying.

As the New York Times reported, citing a State Department official, that back in November "a State Department official viewed some of the images on a laptop belonging to an antigovernment activist."
 * The United States did not act on the photos for the past two months, officials said, because it did not have possession of the digital files and could not establish their authenticity.
 * That supreme caution will be why they didn't say anything until someone else did, just now. And also why they couldn't/wouldn't vouch for the metadata thus far. Finally, they've been verified, apparently, because officials are coming clean. Right?
 * For now, the White House and the State Department are expressing outrage over the images, even as they caution that the United States has not independently authenticated them. 
 * Well, maybe not directly verified, but run by the public and I guess accepted? That's kind of like verification. With Qatari-funded activist photos filed with lawyers in a friendly nation clearly in tune with the joint US-Qatari goals, there's no barrier to having verified them, in two months now, when the claim is this big, so big it need to now overshadow Geneva. The consistent choice, week after week - don't get your own copy, don't force yourself to say one way or another just who the photos really implicate in what. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

State Department Marie Harf said on the 24th "We have been working on authenticating them," Harf said of the photos. While they still hadn't done it, she noted the photos "are completely in line with everything else we've seen from the Assad regime." (AFP via Zee News)

But certainly the lawyers of Carter-Ruck and their investigators, with whom the digital photos were deposited, have assessed the metadata? They rigorously verified the visual content to rule out fakery, so a simple check should have added another level of supporting detail they could cite. Nothing in the report seems to suggest they did this, however.
 * Instances of "metadata" or just "meta" or just "data" = 0
 * "date" in evidentiary context, "coordinates," "location" = 0 matches
 * "files" gets one mention: "...a “dip sample” of images of one hundred and fifty (150) separate individuals was included from two randomly selected files for detailed (visual) examination."
 * "Digital" - "Thirty-­‐five images were uploaded directly to a secure server at Acume Forensics in the United Kingdom for assessment by Stephen Cole, an expert in digital imaging. It was confirmed to the inquiry team that these images were not digitally altered." Nothing about data, this is just the image content, and just for those 35.

And in fact, when explaining why they had to consider if the injuries were from combat, the report says "the images were said to have been produced during a time of armed conflict in Syria." If they knew even the dates on the photos, they would probably cite that, not the defector's hearsay. --Caustic Logic (talk) 02:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I think this will be crucial. Everyone seems to be avoiding what should be one simple part of the verification process. There are two possibilities - okay, three, no, 4

1) everyone just didn't think to get/verify the digital failes and the full metadata while building a case to unseat a sovereign government and make it as "proven" as possible. But as far as they know, it's probably all valid.

1a) it's valid

1b) it's invalid

2) It was recognized that that data weakened their case and so everyone pretends these are 1800s gelatin prints or something. (and most ways the case can be weakened by basic evidence like this will be fatal, IMO, making this probably a supremely unethical type of group avoidance)

3) As I was wondering, outside possibility, they want us to think 2, so they can slap us with metadata, true or not, "proving" whatever.

4) We're/I'm wrong and just missing where they cite, or show they considered, the data, and it's at least consistent with the story handed in stapled to the photos. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Turkish Aydinlik Daily reported on the 24th "Syrian negotiators in Geneva-2 speaking to Aydınlık Newspaper stated that they take the pictures which were released 3 days ago seriously and demanded a close examination to prove their authenticity." Although those on the other side acknowledge they haven't done this, no one in the anti-Assad crowd is demanding what Syria here is, and what should be expected.--Caustic Logic (talk) 00:40, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Faking Metadata?
How possible is it to fake the metadata on a digital photo? Say, you take some Libya photos from 2012, make them say Syria 2013, omit that crucial part deliberately, wait for demands to see that data, then "prove" they're legit Syria images? I like to think ahead. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Trivial. There are countless programs that not only read but write EXIF etc. --CE (talk) 12:14, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Wait ... you mean trivial in likelihood of being done, or a trivial feat that could easily be done anywhere? It seems this level of info is generally accepted as hard fact (harder at least than what people claim the photo shows), but there's always that hypothetical when dealing with information. I have no system knowledge insight to gauge it, really. I say we proceed on the assumption any metadata attached is valid. But to note: even if it's a one a million thing or whatever, that one time clearly would be a time like this, so that presumption is only so tenable. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I mean it's trivial to do. Charles can correct me if I'm wrong but if you don't take the pics with EXIF directly from the camera or have the chain of custody otherwise ensured, there is no definitive value in image files metadata as it is as easily changed/deleted as mp3-tags in music files. If it's missing or implausible, that's of course a clue of manipulation. --CE (talk) 13:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That comports with my actual feeling. I suggest we treat the metadata ... however. If I was actually to see it, I'd first consider it as if it were true and see how that pans out, and go from there, but it's all hypothetical. I'll have to stand by my four basic possibilities outlined above, with faked metadata just as likely as any other kind of deception we can already sense here. Thus the apparent absence of consideration of it could itself be part of the overall information strategy that's in play.--Caustic Logic (talk) 13:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The problem with faking metadata is that it's very easy to get it wrong. That's why it's always safer to delete it completely. As an example say you alter dates in a series of images. If you do it wrong then the metadata for a corpse image may be earlier than the metadata for the victim enjoying a friendly beating.
 * In my forensic work I always work on ensembles of data as no individual file time and date can be relied on in isolation. I typically look at the entire history of a disk or memory stick and see where the files were created, have changed, have been 'deleted' etc. I use a 'timeliner' program to do this. I can also extract image metadata in bulk and run data mining scripts to get many interesting facts about the image sequence and camera(s) involved. It's relatively easy to spot anomalies such as images out of sequence or signs of editing. Most people are dumb. Most forgeries are crude. That's not to say that somone like me couldn't generate an internally consistent sequence of fakes that moves the metadata from say Libya in 2003 to Syria in 2012.--Charles Wood (talk) 22:04, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Charles already said what I was going to say, only better. It is trivial to fake one piece of metadata, but not 50,000. The collection of metadata tells a story, it must be consistent with other parts of the narrative. You cannot shoot a schoolgirl on her way to school – on a Sunday! -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Branch 215 Victims: A Preview?
Just days before this revelation, a somewhat mysterious image, a likely preview of "Caesar's" stash, was "leaked" through anti-Assad activist channels. 12 or more starved and murdered men (see inset) were shown by an unnamed defector, probably "Caesar," with prisoner numbers and 215 written on their chests. Until there's clarification this is part of the main set, this should remain aside, and because of its special status it deserves a spot either way. What relation is there between the promoters of the preview and the de-classifiers of the Carter-Ruck-Doha-Nice-Face report? Etc. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Apparently Le Monde was given a special viewing by some activist dude who's also got a full set of copies of Caesar's stash. Citing this, Worldcrunch reported:
 * Le Monde was also able to see several pictures of a warehouse, turned into a mass grave, with some 15 emaciated corpses scattered on the floor. "This is the garage of the military hospital of Mezzeh," says Rachid. "That's where they throw the corpses when the morgue is full. All these bodies, all skin and bones: It inevitably makes you think about Nazi concentration camps."

By the description, he could refer not so much to this photo but to a different one of the same scene showing a few more bodies. On the other hand, I'm not so sure this looks like the floor of a garage. Either it's the same, or two such scenes have been photographed by defector(s) and recently shared with Western media. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:42, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Apparently this scene was staged "at the time “Caesar” was planning to defect," the Carter-Ruck report states (page 14). It doesn't specify when that was, but the Worldcrunch article says he defected sometime in 2013, and the Mirror says his pictures run "from March 2011 until August 2013." The report continues: "The excuse he gave for group photographs to his colleagues was that in case they had missed a body they could go back to the group photograph." But really, "he had someone in his section take photographs of a group of bodies to show that the place “looked like a slaughterhouse”." That is, he did it for effect, for a striking scene that would make good propaganda, for which it was recognized later. “Caesar” told the inquiry team that he did all this “for the sake of Syria and the Syrian people so that the killers could be prosecuted to achieve justice”. I'm sure they found that, like the rest, "not only credible but ... most compelling."

Report Analysis
Questions:
 * How many bodies are photographed? It's said some 50,000 photos show about 11,000 victims, which is where "industrial scale" comes in, and implications of government authorship flowing from that. If they aren't from Syria, this is irrelevant. If they are, it might be relevant. But first, are there even 11,000 dead proven here? There's also, as CNN mentioned, "a group of photos of 150 individuals examined in detail by the experts." Is it possible that's all there actually is? Will watch for an answer. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:27, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Why the inquiry believed Caesar: Because they Already Did
 * The inquiry team found that the witness codenamed “Caesar” was not only credible but that his account was most compelling.
 * “Caesar’s” account of the need of the regime in Syria to have photographic images of the persons who were killed is wholly consistent with the need of the regime to ensure that orders for the killing of persons in detention facilities had been carried out. In the vie of the inquiry team the need to photograph those who were killed is a strong pointer to the fact that the killings were systematic, ordered, and directed from above.
 * As far as I know, "the need of the regime to ensure that orders for the killing of persons in detention facilities had been carried out" has not been established anywhere. Yet they refer to this as a separate support for Caesar's story implying this need (for "consistent with" to mean a damn thing, the compared things must be separate). That the need he alleges is fulfilled by the methods he alleges is not confirmation, just internal consistency. Lies can be internally consistent, and all good ones in fact are. The very fact that they accept this need as existing somehow, as well as being alleged and so the allegation supported, makes this need "a strong pointer" to the regime's systematic authorship. That in turn would require verification, and maybe that's why they're so sure of that "need of the regime" - it's exactly the shape of the track of circular reasoning they've opted to lock themselves into.--Caustic Logic (talk) 06:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The term Consistent With is one of those weasel phrases beloved by lawyers. It's used to imply a stronger relationship than actually exists but can be plausibly denied at any stage. What they are actually saying is that the two items, ideas, facts, whatever do not conflict with each other but there is no known causal relationship between them. e.g. "bloodstains are consistent with someone being stabbed" doesn't mean someone was stabbed but that stabbing is a potential cause of bloodstains - as is shooting or simply having a blood nose. The jury on the other hand will hear the words bloodstain, stabbing, and consistent with, and assume the bloodstains have come from the stabbing. The lawyer for the other side won't point this out because that could mean giving away tradecraft secrets they plan to use themselves later. Instead they will come up with some other explanation that is 'also consistent' --Charles Wood (talk) 08:01, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * And it's even worse if there's no proof there ever was a bloodstain or even a red stain. The parallel here would be "the witness' account of the defendant's threat to stab the deceased is supported by the bloodstain the witness says she observed on the defendant's sleeve, as he cackled maniacally and dropped the victim's wrapped body off the bridge into the rushing river below." --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:38, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe that's not the exact right parallel, but the idea comes through. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Interesting Clues From the Report

 * These photographs also included those who appeared to have been starved to death, some with signs of torture prior to death. Indeed, there were marks of beatings and burns even upon those emaciated bodies. In some cases the bodies had no eyes.
 * Gouging out eyes is not quite as reliable an indicator of Islamist mutilation as a sliced throat, but it is up there. Another, in Syria, especially in Homs 2012 and operhaps Damascus 2013, is patches of flesh seemingly scooped away, mostly in these areas: armpit, chest, belly, thighs, groin. If these injuries appear, that's the mark of the infamous "Shabiha," not to be confused with any actual loyalist forces existent in the 3-D world. --Caustic Logic (talk) 06:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Evidence of a possible design to conflate these officially-processed bodies with other bodies, probably of terrorist victims, that have been buried in rural areas:
 * Once the bodies were photographed they were taken for burial in a rural area.
 * Of course that could just be what they actually did, but the possibility he made this part up is worth mentioning. --Caustic Logic (talk) 06:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * "...bandages, most of which appeared make-shift, were present in 9%" of one image set studied. Are makeshift bandages more a state prison thing, or rebel field clinic thing, or a battlefield thing? Not the first, yes to either of the others. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:11, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Media Criticism
Leading language: in the report (a type of media, and the central one here) and the mass media promotion.
 * The report blames the "current Syrian regime," suggesting of course there will be a different government (that won't be called regime) pretty soon here. How does that kind of choice bode for the credibility of these tyrant-paid war crimes prosecutors? Not well, I'd say. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:27, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The prisoners were marked systematically with "a complex numbering system," as CNN put it, suggests cold, smart regimes, with resources and time, claculating their genocide. Surely rebels in Syria could hold, torture, starve, and kill captives, blame others, and even procure the needed markers. But employ a complex numbering system? No way. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:27, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
 * More complexity/coldness: ""Killing its opponents is the regime's routine," explains Rachid. "Registring torture is nothing more than the continued pursuit of the routine." ... "The numbers follow each other," he says. "It's assembly-line killing." Oh my, wait ... didn't Hitler employ brutal routines, AND use numbers that came one after another in a predictable sequence? Starved dead people ... now this ... Ohmygod! Never again! Responsibility 2 Panic! --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:27, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * In fact, It's possible the claims are fake and the photos are of something other than what "Caesar" says. It's possible the claims are based on a core of truth but exaggerated. It's possible, as the Daily Fail reported, that "Syrian regime 'torture' photographs could be the tip of the iceberg," as "human rights experts" warn. And It's possible that iceberg itself is just the tip of ... an iceberg city, man. Only one of those possibilities gets a headline. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:32, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Jonathan Freedland, Guardian "The report's authors, who interviewed the source for three days, have no obvious axe to grind and are eminently credible: they served as prosecutors at the criminal tribunals on Sierra Leone the former Yugoslavia." They helped chop the heads off of states the West disapproved of, twice at least. Strictly humanitarian and truth-based work that surely involves no axe, and suggests no gripe against Syria's head of state coloring their thinking here. Apparently? Or does "no axe to grind" mean their axe is plenty sharp already? And so Freedland continues: "Those facts will surely offset any misgivings over the report's origins" in Qatar. Strangely enough for me, the authors strengthen those misgivings, a lot. Prosecutors are driven by getting convictions. If they can use truth, they likely will. If not, they still do their jobs. Anyone who's studied a single unjust trial can see this, so where does a Guardian columnist get off saying shit like "should offset any misgivings"? --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Loooool. I took these points - sharpened - to the comments section. So long as they appear, go to the end. #1, #2, and #3. Within an hour or so, as I pondered a #4 directing readers here, someone at Comment is Free decided comments are closed. So, no "right on" comments can be expected. There were going to be some. :) --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Voltairenet makes a fun observation: "The Carter-Ruck firm stamped "Confidential" twice on every page of its public report." Uuuuh, credible. Also some interesting (alleged) details about the three "experts":
 * Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva is the author of a report commissioned by the Prime Minister on the death of an Irish lawyer, which the victim’s family regarded as a "sham." He recognized the responsibility of the authorities, too flagrant to be denied, but sidestepped the evidence incriminating the leaders at the top. Sir Geoffrey Nice gained renown as Slobodan Milošević’s prosecutor for two years, without ever pinpointing the slightest shred of evidence of crimes against humanity. The trial abruptly ended with the death of the detainee. As for David Mr. Crane, he is a former CIA and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) official who, since the beginning of the war against Syria, has been in charge of a program to bring Bashar el-Assad before a special international court.
 * --CE (talk) 13:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, it was stamped confidential, and then released, as far as can be told. "Declassified" is the proper term. Of course, that was probably the plan all along, and the word there just to look all "professional" and "careful." But that can't be proven. Nice effect - it had to be "de-classified" so the world can know! Such a step, to open up such a careful and hushed investigation, and trust us - little ol' US - with with this horrible truth that couldn't wait any longer! Excellent background on the authors, thx. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "Declassified", yeah. Just like the CIA or some other big guys would do. Impressive! For a law firm, even a London-based one. ;o) --CE (talk) 14:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Or de-confidentiated, or whatever... --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)


 * O Jeez, O Canada (Jan. 21): Syrian physicians, judges linked to coverup of mass killings in Syria, report finds
 * Ghastly as the pictures are of the Syrian regime’s tortured dead, they aren’t the worst of it. In the lawyerly report released this week on the eve of peace talks opening in Geneva, the most damning information links an unknown number of unnamed Syrian physicians and judges to the coverup of large-scale killings the authors describe as “systematic, ordered and directed from above.”
 * We will never get any names or details on the masses of dead bodies he has a blanket story for, but who notably died only after a nasty armed insurgency joined the government as possible producers of dead bodies. But I imagine people are right now taking down the names of Syrian doctors and lawyers Caesar's willing to rattle off. The author would apparently recommend that. It's not a badly-written piece (I cringed at the word "government" next to Qatar's, but to her credit, it's also next to Syria's, in place of "regime.")
 * But what the hell is this? She thinks the report is "titled with magnificent understatement “A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime.”" How did they manage to understate ... hold on, is that grammatically correct? "A report into...?" Anyway, there was no anything into this credibility except investment. It's an exercise in credulity, not skepticism or balanced inquiry. It launders the defector's allegations and little more. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Branch 215

 * "Torture Archipelago" – Human Rights Watch, 3 July 2012.
 * ''The vast majority of detention cases documented by Human Rights Watch can be qualified as enforced disappearances. In international law this is when state agents or other persons acting with the support of the state detain someone and then refuse to acknowledge the detention, or conceal his or her fate or whereabouts.[5] In most of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, the detainees’ families had no information about their fate or whereabouts for weeks or, in some cases, months following the arrest, despite their inquiries with various intelligence agencies. The authorities did not allow detainees to have any contact with the outside world and left their families wondering whether their detained relatives were alive or dead. (Page 5)


 * Military Intelligence Directorate (Syria) – Wikipedia
 * "A Conflict Between Death and Hope" – A Report on Branch 215, Raid Brigade Military Intelligence Division - Damascus – Special Reports, Violation Documentation Center in Syria, September 2013 (PDF)

Mass Grave Claims

 * Obviously this issue will likely be related and deserves an even earlier mention. Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria - The VDC announced on October 1 it had found "two sites it believes are being used to bury thousands of regime detainees in the Damascus area." Caesar defected with his story in August, it seems, so it could be his information somehow inspiring this finding at this time. It's likely to come up again soon as a supporting argument.

Caesar said the bodies were buried "in a rural area." Their press release specifies also Branch 215, and says "hundreds of detainees who have died in that Branch have been buried in two relatively adjacent areas "Njha, Damascus Suburbs," where the regime forces dug two parallel trenches parallel in the Martyrs Cemetery Njha, as the center used satellites images showing the potential places that are usually and "very likely" used as mass graves." Contradiction? Maybe not. The martyr's cemetery in Njah is in a farming area in the suburbs. HRW also made a graphic, included, showing new trench digging there in late August - 2011 - and September 2012, then more by February 2013. !!?? The other area is by it, just north. Both are south of Damascus, just south Sayida Zainab. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)