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

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)


 * 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)
 * Excellent points. They'll point out every "tramline injury" and define what that means, but they seem to have no firm grasp on when, where, and by whom these images were taken. Besides no sign of assessing this crucial information, there are signs they actively have avoided it. If they knew from the EXIF data when they were taken, or were calling on that knowledge, they wouldn't likely say "the images were said to have been produced during a time of armed conflict in Syria," and so they had to consider if the injuries were from combat (uh, no). Ever so careful those guys were. A relatively minor point: "bandages, most of which appeared make-shift, were present in 9%." Are makeshift bandages more a state prison or rebel field clinic thing?
 * Also, I made a link best filled in with the best title. In case someone more knowledgeable on these issues and more methodical wants to start it up. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:31, 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)

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)

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

EXIF Data and Sniffing Out Rats

 * ''Moved to Category talk:Investigation

Signs of Willful Avoidance
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. As for why 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 whether just who the photos really implicate in what. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:54, 23 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 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)

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)

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)

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)