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April 16, 2014

Security Council Views Graphic Images from Syrian Defector 
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The U.N. Security Council held a session Tuesday to view photographs
documenting alleged war crimes by the Assad regime in Syria. A team of
three international prosecutors has obtained images from a Syrian
defector showing emaciated and mutilated bodies likely resulting from
torture. The defector is said to be a military investigator who handed
over thousands of photographs he had taken of the regime's victims.
David Crane, chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal,
said the images provide direct proof of "industrialized" killings by
Assad.

David Crane: "Our conclusion in the report was that the photographs and
the witness himself are credible and sustainable in a court of law at
the international or domestic level and that what he brought out over a
period of two years was direct, specific, provable evidence of
widespread and industrialized killing not seen recently. The reason I
underscore this again is that it's a rare thing in our business that we
get this type of direct evidence. But it's direct, provable,
sustainable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence of war crimes and crimes
against humanity being conducted by the Assad regime."

 

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