“The bodies he photographed since the civil war began, showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing. The defector who was codenamed “Caesar” by the inquiry team had, during the course of his work, smuggled out some tens of thousands of images of corpses so photographed by his colleagues and himself. “Caesar” did not see the torture or executions himself, but photographed the bodies afterward. The report explains, “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.” That is to say, the Baath officials who ordered these 11,000 executions of prisoners of war were afraid that prison guards would take bribes to release the prisoners and just report them dead………….”

In the summer of 2011 I thought the Libyan revolt was becoming a lengthy civil war like Spain. But that was before NATO, Bernard-Henri Levy, John McCain, Qatar, and the UAE intervened to liberate that country. I have also compared the Syrian civil war to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Syria is almost as ugly as Spain was in those years, almost. I have compared the two wars in the past, in an older post in 2011 here and then in another post in 2012 here. There was also another one with the same theme last year. But Spain was not a sectarian war, it was an ideological rehearsal for World War II.
Both sides in Syria have committed atrocities. But the regime almost certainly does it on a much larger scale than the opposition, simply because it has more destructive weapons and more prisons at its disposal, as well as more security agents. And, like all established Arab regimes, it has a more efficient bureaucracy of repression. The regime has a long history as a police state, while the opposition groups are just beginning, already aspiring to start their own future police state, no doubt using the experience of its Arab supporters and Wahhabi allies. The opposition militias have killed less, but they probably aspire to kill many more (of regime supporters and people of other faiths).
Still, one hell of a timing for this so-called Caesar to cross the Rubicon now while the Geneva talks are in session. One thing about the Syrian opposition and their supporters: they know how to time their ‘exposés‘ and leaked photos and videos for maximum effect.

Cheers
mhg