The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, [1] formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, [2] [3] and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. [2] Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. [4] The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government. [5]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded after a six month investigation that the photographic evidence in the report was genuine. The ensuing HRW report based on the Caesar Report was titled, If the Dead Could Speak. [6] [7] This report published on 16 December 2015 said that Syrian officials should be tried for crimes against humanity. [8]
The Caesar Report led to U.S. sanctions on Syria under the Global Magnitsky Act in 2012, and under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act in 2020. The Caesar Act was passed under the U.S. Senate National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (S. 1709) through a committee report by the U.S. House of Representatives [9] [10] [11]
The source, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was at the time a photographer with the Syrian military police who worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Movement. His job was "taking pictures of killed detainees" at just two military hospitals in Damascus. [8] He told war crimes investigators that he used to be a forensic investigator. But once the Syrian uprising began, his job became documenting the corpses of those killed in Syrian military prisons. [12] He did not claim to have witnessed executions or torture. But he did describe a highly bureaucratic system. The bodies would then be buried in rural areas. [2] He began making duplicates of his photo evidence in September 2011 and sending them on thumb drives to a relative who fled Syria and was working with human rights groups. After sharing thousands of images, he feared for his safety and was smuggled out of the country in August 2013.
The authors of the report who interviewed him found him credible and truthful and his account "most compelling" [3] after subjecting it to "rigorous scrutiny". [2]
The authors of the report are:
Also involved in the report were three experienced forensic science experts, including evidence from a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist who investigated mass graves in Kosovo and an expert in digital images [2] who examined and authenticated samples of 55,000 digital images, comprising about 11,000 victims. [3]
The 31-page report, which was commissioned by a leading firm of London solicitors, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of government security forces. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had eyes gouged out and others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution. [12]
The report stated: "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." Families were told that the cause of death was either a "heart attack" or "breathing problems," it added. "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." [3]
The photos were taken on the premises of the 601 Military Hospital in the Mezzeh district of Damascus. [13]
The report is being made available to the UN, governments and human rights groups. Experts say the evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the Syrian conflict. As a result of the report it has been suggested that Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in light of the evidence presented within. [3]
This is solid evidence of the kind of machinery of cruel death that we haven’t seen, frankly, since the Nazis. If it is as it appears thus far, we’re talking about more than 10,000 individuals being killed in custody over the period from 2011 to 2013, including largely men but also some very, very young men and boys and women… It’s shocking to me, as a prosecutor — I’m used to evidence not being so strong
— Stephen Rapp, Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) [14]
The inquiry team said it was satisfied there was "clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government. It would support findings of crimes against humanity and could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime." [15]
De Silva told the Guardian that the evidence "documented industrial-scale killing," and added: "This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn't have before. It makes a very strong case indeed." [3]
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." [16]
A representative for Bashar al-Assad denied the images were even taken inside the country. But representatives of the U.S. State Department, British Foreign Secretary, Amnesty International and other bodies said the photographs are irrefutable testimony of widespread human rights abuses that could well rise to the level of war crimes. [12]
Due to the report and other findings, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, stated, "The mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the Government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination as a crime against humanity". [1]
According to a report by Amnesty International, published in November 2015, the Syrian government has forcibly disappeared more than 65,000 people (who are yet to be heard from) since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. [17] According to a report in May 2016 by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 60,000 people have been killed through torture or died from dire humanitarian conditions in Syrian government jails since March 2011. [18]
The HRW report If the Dead Could Speak corroborated the images and findings in the Caesar Report. [6] [7] [19] [20]
Human Rights Watch had released a torture report about the Assad government years before this, titled, "Torture Archipelago." [21]
The Caesar Exhibit is a high-profile exhibition showing photographic evidence of torture and death committed by the Assad government in Syria's prisons.
This exhibit is sponsored by the non-profit organization Syrian Emergency Task Force. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, European Parliament, UK Parliament, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the UN have showcased this exhibit.
Mostly on the base of the data from the Caesar Report, a universal jurisdiction trial under German law (German : Völkerstrafgesetzbuch) started on 23 April 2020 in the city of Koblenz in Germany. The duration of the trial was estimated as several months. The trial has two defendants, former Syrian security servicemen, a colonel Anwar Raslan (57) and his aid, Eyad al-Gharib (43), both were working in the Branch 251 of the Syrian secret service in Damascus. As stated by prosecution, there was a prison just near the Branch 251 where 4,000 prisoners were tortured from April 2011 to September 2012 under Anwar Raslan's leadership. [22] [23] [24]
Assad denies the findings of the Caesar Report. [8] The pro-Assad group, Syria Solidarity Movement (SSM), claimed that reports made by many journalists about conditions of Assad's prisons were biased or false. [25]
Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the current and 19th president of Syria since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which nominally espouses a neo-Ba'athist ideology. His father and predecessor was General Hafiz al-Assad, whose presidency in 1971–2000 marked the transfiguration of Syria from a republican state into a de facto dynastic dictatorship, tightly controlled by an Alawite-dominated elite composed of the armed forces and the Mukhabarat, who are loyal to the al-Assad family.
The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under orders of president Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government. The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and Alawite militias under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad.
Torture, the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain upon an individual to extract information or a confession, or as an illicit extrajudicial punishment, is prohibited by international law and is illegal in most countries. However, it is still used by many governments. The subject of this article is the use of torture since the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which prohibited it.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a US-based not-for-profit human rights NGO that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world. PHR headquarters are in New York City, with offices in Boston, Washington, D.C., as well as Nairobi. It was established in 1986 to use the unique skills and credibility of health professionals to advocate for persecuted health workers, prevent torture, document mass atrocities, and hold those who violate human rights accountable.
The situation for human rights in Syria is considered one of the worst in the world and has been globally condemned by international organizations like the United Nations, Human rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Union. Civil liberties, political rights, freedom of speech and assembly are virtually non-existent under the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad; which is regarded as "one of the world's most repressive regimes". The 50th edition of Freedom in the World, the annual report published by Freedom House since 1973, designates Syria as "Worst of the Worst" among the "Not Free" countries. The report lists Syria as one of the two countries to get the lowest possible score (1/100).
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by governments security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the crisis had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
War crimes in the Syrian civil war have been numerous and serious. A United Nations report published in August 2014 stated that "the conduct of the warring parties in the Syrian Arab Republic has caused civilians immeasurable suffering". Another UN report released in 2015 stated that the war has been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law" and that "civilians have borne the brunt of the suffering inflicted by the warring parties". Various countries have prosecuted several war criminals for a limited number of atrocities committed during the Syrian civil war.
Sednaya Prison, nicknamed the "Human Slaughterhouse" is a military prison near Damascus in Syria operated by the Syrian government. The prison has been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees have perished in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015."
The Bayda and Baniyas massacres were two widely reported massacres that occurred in May 2013 in the village of Bayda and the city of Baniyas, in Tartus Governorate, Syria, where Syrian Army troops, supported by paramilitaries, killed civilians in the predominantly Sunni locales. The killings were supposedly in retaliation for an earlier rebel attack near the town that left at least half a dozen soldiers dead.
The Syrian revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was the series of mass protests and uprisings– with subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic – lasting from March 2011 to June 2012, as part of the wider Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long rule of Assad family, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into nation-wide mass protests in March. The uprising was marked by large-scale protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad, meeting with police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded.
The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) is a United States-based, 501-C(3) organization established in March 2011 to support the Syrian opposition. SETF advocates in solidarity with the Syrian rebels to inform and educate the American public and its representatives about their struggle.
From 1964 until 2011, the State of Emergency Law in Syria allowed government forces to arbitrarily detain political suspects at will for unlimited duration of time. During this time, tens of thousands have reportedly been arrested, tortured, and held in isolation for months to years without charge or trial. Although the state of emergency was lifted in 2011 at the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, arrests continue. Civil society activists, media workers, and medical and humanitarian workers have reportedly been targeted by government forces, pro-government militias, and increasingly by non-state armed groups.
The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, also known as the Caesar Act, is United States legislation that sanctions the Syrian government, including Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, for war crimes against the Syrian population. The Act was signed into law by President Trump in December 2019, and came into force on June 17, 2020.
International and national courts outside Syria have begun the prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals. War crimes perpetrated by the Syrian government or rebel groups include extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture and imprisonment. "[A]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights is central to achieving and maintaining durable peace in Syria", stated UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo.
Omar Alshogre is a Syrian refugee, a public speaker and a human rights activist. He is currently the Director for Detainee Affairs at the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He is known for his efforts to raise awareness of human rights abuses in Syria and his personal experience of torture and starvation by the Syrian government during his three years of detention.
Anwar Raslan is a Syrian former colonel who led a unit of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate. In January 2022, he was convicted of crimes against humanity in a German Higher Regional Court under universal jurisdiction. The specific charges against him were 4,000 counts of torture, 58 counts of murder, rape, and sexual coercion. His case was the first international war crimes case against a member of the Syrian government during the presidency of Bashar al-Assad.
Wafa Mustafa is a Syrian journalist and activist who campaigns for the release of Syrian detainees. As an activist and former member of Families for Freedom, Mustafa has extensively lobbied the United Nations Security Council to call for the release of the names and locations of all those that Syrian authorities have in captivity. She calls for all detainees in Syria to be freed, whether they are held by the Assad regime or by opposition groups, though she also supports the public demonstrations that began in 2011 against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) is a non-profit justice and legal documentation organization that monitors and reports on violations by various actors in the Syrian Conflict. Its documentation includes data on the Syrian government, opposition forces, ISIS, and foreign actors. The organization was started by the group Friends of the Syrian People in 2012, who had a stated goal of preserving documentation and creating a centralized source for data collection. SJAC primarily works on issues related to transitional justice, criminal accountability, and human rights violations in Syria.
Al-Khatib prison is a detention and torture center in the Muhajreen neighborhood of central Damascus, Syria. It is operated by Branch 251 of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate.
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