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Women, Children Among Photos of Regime Torture

Leaked photos portray women and children as victims of regime war crimes
Women, Children Among Photos of Regime Torture

Exclusive photos obtained by Zaman al-Wasl show, for the first time, women and children among the 11,000 victims who died under torture in Syrian security facilities between 2011 and 2013, according to a January 2014 report.

Photos of torture by Syrian security personnel were taken in a well-known military hospital in the Mezzah neighborhood of Damascus.

Leaked photographs from Hospital 601, the scene of President Bashar al-Assad’s war crimes, showed hundreds of lifeless bodies with signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation and other forms of torture and killing.

The photos illustrate apparent actions of serious international crimes committed in security services’ chambers against 11,000 detainees, according to human rights advocates.

Zaman al-Wasl insists on deliberately publishing victims' faces, so that families and relatives can recognize the victims.

The ‘Crime of the century’ photos are linked to a war crime report published last year by a team of internationally recognized war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts.

In mid 2013, a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts, had analyzed 55,000 digital photos taken and provided by a Syrian defector codenamed ‘Caesar’, who, along with his family, is now living outside Syria in an undisclosed location, according to CNN.

The team members shared their findings in a joint exclusive with CNN's "Amanpour" and The Guardian newspaper in January 2014.

Former Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Sir. Desmond de Silva, likened the images to those of Holocaust survivors and Nazi death camps after World War II.

Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The only way the court could prosecute someone from Syria would be through a referral from the United Nations Security Council.

According to the UN, more than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt against the Assad regime began in March 2011.

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