This week, a small room in the Lewis International Law Center is hosting a collection of thirty images taken in a military hospital in Damascus. Hung on the walls and mounted on easels, the images show corpses of Syrians with black bars superimposed across their eyes. They are men and women of all ages, including the very old and the very young: some naked, some emaciated, some horrifically mutilated, all bearing on their bodies, limbs, and faces unmistakable marks of torture.
These thirty images are but a small fraction of a staggering 55,000 that were smuggled out of Syria last year by an anonymous informant, codenamed “Caesar,” who worked as a forensic photographer for the Assad regime’s police force. They represent, according to Stephen J. Rapp, former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, “the most impressive and strongest evidence” for systematic torture committed by the Assad regime between 2011 and 2013.
“[The Assad regime] are even better than the Nazis,” said Rapp. “The Nazis produced a lot of documentation, but even they didn’t take pictures of every body, with a card to identify the date and the facility it came from.”
Rapp was one of four guests who spoke at an event on October 23 to discuss the origins and potential impact of the images. Other members of the panel – moderated by Susan Farbstein, co-director of the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic – were Mouaz Moustafa, Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force; Tyler Jess Thompson, Policy Director for United for a Free Syria; and Naomi Kikoler, Deputy Director of the Center for Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. All panelists expressed frustration at a perceived lack of political will, both in the U.S. and in the international community at large, to condemn and combat human rights abuses in Syria.
“I really wish I could transport all of you to Syria right now,” remarked Moustafa, “at least to the border. Thirty minutes in Syria is worth more than hours of researching and reporting.” The situation on the ground in Syria, which often appears “too complicated” to outsiders, is very simple to Syrians, according to Moustafa: in 2011, they demonstrated against a dictator, asking for political reforms, and were met with ruthless violence. What bothers the average Syrian refugee most of all, even more than the hardship and indignity of living in camps, is the knowledge that “the world has deserted us.”
The man who smuggled the photos out of Syria, “Caesar,” does not profess alignment with any political faction. Before the civil war, he worked as a forensic photographer for the police, documenting crime scenes and accidents. In 2011, he was summoned to a military hospital to photograph a group of fifteen bodies of men, women, and children. All fifteen individuals had been tortured to death.
Over the next two years, as the bodies of thousands of similar victims continued to be produced for documentation, Caesar began sneaking photographs onto flash drives. His primary motive, according to panelists who know him personally, was to bring closure to the families of the missing.
What effect, if any, this cache of photos will produce in Washington remains to be seen. Caesar himself recently testified before Congress concerning the images, but a personal letter he wrote to President Obama went unanswered until a follow-up inquiry by a New York Times reporter. Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser, then wrote a response affirming the president’s support for monitors to be instated at Syrian prisons. “I’ll just let you imagine Caesar’s reaction,” said Mouaz. “He expected the U.S. to be outraged. But nothing will happen.”
The photographs have, however, made it more difficult for “realists” in Washington, who see the Assad regime as a potential ally against the Islamic State, to support a rehabilitation of Assad’s reputation, according to Tyler Jess Thompson. The photos have also been invaluable in establishing that civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, were targeted by the Assad regime from the very earliest days of the civil war. A pervasive assumption amongst ambassadors and counterterrorism advisers in 2011, recounted Naomi Kikoler, was that only “young men out protesting” were being killed. “These photos are an attempt to do something that was not done for the Jews and others during World War II,” said Kikoler, stressing that the international community has a duty to hold the perpetrators of atrocities accountable. “We don’t lack the institutions—the legal and judicial institutions. We lack the political will.”
Stephen J. Rapp discussed the possibility of using the photographs and other documentary evidence to initiate criminal proceedings against perpetrators of Syrian war crimes. France has recently opened an investigation based on the Caesar files. Rapp believes that Germany, which has committed to taking more Syrians refugees than any other EU country, may determine that it has a significant public policy interest in trying cases against perpetrators of human rights violations in Syria. Opposition by China and Russia, however, has so far made it impossible for the UN Security Council to refer Syria’s case to the International Criminal Court.
All panelists agreed that, after years of catastrophic violence, and the Assad regime’s violation of nearly every law of war, there can be no peace in Syria without justice.
“Caesar’s photos put the viewer in extremely close proximity to the victims,” said Thompson. “They killed these civilians to kill the dream of an entire people. They killed them to show Syrians that the only option was submission.”