Summary

You can bring photographs from anyone and say this is torture. There is no verification of any of this evidence, so it’s all allegations without evidence.

—Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Interview with Foreign Affairs, January 20, 2015

I know this place from the photographs stone by stone, brick by brick. I lived there 24 hours a day. I had to carry [the bodies] myself.

—Suleiman Ali (not his real name), former conscript who worked at the 601 Military Hospital

Since the beginning of Syria’s uprising in 2011, many have died in detention facilities run by the Syrian government’s notorious mukhabarat (security agencies). In 2012, Human Rights Watch identified and mapped 27 of these detention centers around the country, many in the capital, Damascus. While accounts by released detainees and defectors consistently indicated that incommunicado detention and torture were rampant and detainees were dying in large numbers in Syria, the scale of abuse and deaths in detention remained unknown.

Then in January 2014, news emerged that a defector had left Syria with tens of thousands of images, many showing the bodies of detainees who died in Syria’s detention centers. A team of international lawyers, as well as Syrian activists, interviewed the defector, code-named “Caesar,” who stated that, as an official forensic photographer for the Military Police, he had personally photographed bodies of dead detainees and helped to archive thousands more similar photographs.

These photographs were taken apparently as part of a bureaucratic effort by the Syrian security apparatus to maintain a photographic record of the thousands who have died in detention since 2011 as well as of members of security forces who died in attacks by armed opposition groups. The exact purpose of the photographs is not clear. In an interview with a journalist, Caesar himself indicated that he “often wondered” about the reason but that in his view, “the regime documents everything so that it will forget nothing. Therefore, it documents these deaths…If one day the judges have to reopen cases, they’ll need them.”

In total, according to the international team of experts that prepared the first report on the collection, Caesar smuggled more than 50,000 images out of Syria on discs and thumb drives until he defected.

He entrusted these images to the Syrian National Movement (SNM), an opposition political movement. Members of that group formed the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD), which took custody of the files. In March 2015, the SNM gave 53,275 unique files to Human Rights Watch, stating that these files represented the complete set of data Caesar collected. The group said that the photographs had not been altered except for some resizing that occurred as the photographs were digitally transferred. According to the dates on the files, the photographs were taken between May 2011 and August 2013, the month Caesar defected.

The Caesar Photographs

The Caesar photographs received by Human Rights Watch can be divided into three categories.

The largest category of photographs, 28,707 images, are photographs of people Human Rights Watch understands to have died in government custody, either in one of several detention facilities or after being transferred to a military hospital. What distinguishes this batch of photographs is that all the bodies in them have identification numbers, typically three separate numbers, either written directly on the body or on a paper that is placed on the body or held in the photograph frame. There are multiple photographs of each body, typically four to five but ranging between three to more than twenty. SAFMCD, which reviewed the entire collection and logged the photographs by individual body, found that these 28,707 photographs correspond to at least 6,786 separate dead individuals each with their own unique identification numbers.

The second category of photographs are images of dead army soldiers or members of the security forces. These photographs were also taken in the morgues of military hospitals. However, unlike the first batch, the cards on these photographs include the name of the person who died, and sometimes the date of their death. In many cases, their name is prefaced by the word shahid, or martyr, in Arabic, as well as by their military rank. In addition to the cards, their name, the word shahid, and their military rank also often appear in the file name.

The third category of photographs taken by the Syrian Military Police can be described as crime scene photographs taken in the aftermath of attacks and cover several categories of incidents including the aftermath of explosions, assassinations of security officers, fires, and car bombs. The name of the folder in which sets of photographs were saved indicates the type of incident, the date, and sometimes, the name of the victim. Human Rights Watch was able to confirm some of these incidents and killings, which were covered in the Syrian media at the time they occurred and provide further evidence as to the authenticity of the photographs.

This report focuses on analyzing the first category of photographs in greater detail.

In the “Caesar” photographs, a white card or paper on each body indicated the security branch number, detainee number (assigned by the security branch), and medical examination number (assigned by a forensic doctor after death). © 2013 “Caesar” collection A medical report smuggled out by Caesar outlines the procedure after detainees’ bodies were removed from security branches. The report states: “based on the order of the military general prosecutor, photograph the bodies of detainees 2614, b-2615, b-2616, b-2617, b-2618, b-2619, b-2620, b-2621, b-2622, b-2623, b-2624, prisoners under the responsibility of the security services, unit 215, in the morgue of Military Hospital 601 on May 24, 2013, based on these orders.” © 2013 “Caesar” collection Abdullah Arslan al-Hariri Khalid Hadla Osama Hussein Salim Ayham Ghazzoul Ahmad al-Musalmani Rehab al-Allawi Oqba al-Mashaan Mohammed Tariq Majid A note from the head of the 227 Branch to the Military Police informing them about the death of a detainee: during the investigation with [DETAINEE], his health conditions declined and he was given emergency treatment in the 601 Military Hospital. On June 2, 2013, the [DETAINEE] died after his heart and breathing stopped. He was placed in the morgue refrigerator, with the number “2030.” Please bury his corpse…in coordination with the Burial Office in accordance with the written [DECISION] of the National Security Office. With copies to three security branches. © 2013 “Caesar” collection Groups of bodies waiting to be photographed and logged by military medical personnel, in the garage of Military Hospital 601 in Mezze, Damascus. © 2013 “Caesar” collection According to a conscript who defected after more than two years serving at the 601 Military Hospital, as the number of bodies that arrived at the hospital increased, the hospital ran out of rooms in the morgue’s refrigerated compartments, and began storing the bodies in a garage where army vehicles were sent for repair. © 2013 “Caesar” collection Groups of bodies waiting to be photographed and logged by military medical personnel, in the garage of Military Hospital 601 in Mezze, Damascus. © 2013 “Caesar” collection Groups of bodies waiting to be photographed and logged by military medical personnel, in the garage of Military Hospital 601 in Mezze, Damascus. © 2013 “Caesar” collection

Deaths in Custody

All the photographs in the first category of the Caesar images—photographs of the bodies of those Human Rights Watch understands died in detention—were taken inside what appear to be rooms in morgues, or in a courtyard that Caesar identified as a garage of one of the military hospitals. Caesar told both an international team of lawyers investigating the photographs and the U.S. Congress that they were taken at Syrian government military hospitals. “What you see here is the garage of the military hospital,” he told Congress. “We used to use the morgue, but they were bringing way more bodies, so we decided to start using the garage.” Using satellite imagery and geolocation techniques, as well as the evidence of a defector from Military Hospital 601, Human Rights Watch confirmed that the courtyard photographs were taken in the courtyard of Military Hospital 601 in Mezze, Damascus. Folder names in the photograph collection, as well as photographs of medical reports and military judicial system orders included in the collection, indicate that Syrian military police photographers, in coordination with the military’s forensic medical officers, took the photographs at Military Hospital 601 and Tishreen Military Hospital, also in Damascus.

Click to expand Image © 2015 Human Rights Watch

Click to expand Image Click to expand Image © 2015 Human Rights Watch To understand what the identification numbers in the photographs referred to, Human Rights Watch reviewed Caesar’s testimony to the United States Congress, as well as reports compiled by an international team of lawyers who interviewed Caesar for three days and detailed his description of the numbering system. We also interviewed two defectors from Damascus security branches as well as a former conscript from the 601 Military Hospital and a former nurse from the Tishreen military hospital. Former detainees reported seeing numbers written on the bodies of dead detainees or on cards, before guards removed the bodies from security branches. Finally, Human Rights Watch reviewed leaked documents ordering the photographing and transfer of bodies, both from the Caesar collection and documents passed directly to Human Rights Watch by defectors. Based on the information gathered, Human Rights Watch believes that the three numbers correspond to:

Branch number: a number assigned to each security branch facility operated by Syrian intelligence services, e.g. Branch 215 (operated by Military Intelligence); Branch 227 (the Area Branch, operated by Military Intelligence)

Detainee number: a number assigned to each detainee by the security branch that holds him in custody.

Examination number or death number: a number assigned to each detainee by the forensic doctor of the military hospital, given at the time the doctor registered the death, prepared a medical report on it, and ordered a military photographer (such as Caesar) to photograph the body.

The largest number of photographs in the Caesar collection are from the following five detention facilities, all located in Damascus (Syria’s Military Intelligence agency operates four of the five branches):

Security Branch Number of Caesar Victims Identified with Branch 215: Military Intelligence 3,532 227: Military Intelligence 2,043 ج : Air Force Intelligence

(marked with Arabic initial for the name of Air Force) 352 216 “Patrols”: Military Intelligence 293 235 “Palestine”: Military Intelligence 127

Photographs from several additional security branches including the 248 Branch (known as Investigation Branch, Military Intelligence) and the 220 Branch (a branch of Military Intelligence in Sa`sa`, a town Southwest of Damascus), the Fourth Brigade detention facility and the military-run Sednaya Prison are also included.

It is important to note that the Caesar photographs do not represent a comprehensive record of deaths in detention in the Damascus area in the period during which the photographs were taken and collected. While many detention facilities sent their dead to Tishreen and 601 military hospital, a defector from Syria’s State Security services who worked as a guard at the al-Khatib branch of State Security told Human Rights Watch that those who died in detention at the facility where he worked were transferred to Harasta military hospital in the northeastern suburbs of Damascus and not to Tishreen and 601 military hospitals where Caesar had taken the photographs. Moreover, the photographs are not a random sampling, but represent the photographs Caesar had access to and copied when he felt he could do so with relative safety. Therefore, the number of bodies from detention facilities that appear in the Caesar photographs represent only a part of those who died in detention in Damascus, or even in these particular facilities, during the 27 month period in which the military police and forensic medical authorities produced these photographs. Based on the sequences of the examination or death numbers, the Syrian Association for the Missing and Prisoners of Conscience (SAFMCD) believe that the Caesar photographs indicate at least 11,000 bodies were photographed in two of Damascus’ military hospitals between May 2011 and August 2013, when Caesar defected.

Verifying the Photographs: The Stories of the Victims

Human Rights Watch set out to answer three key sets of questions about the photographs of the dead detainees: 1) Are the photographs authentic? Are they really images of dead detainees? 2) If so, what caused so many to die? and 3) How did the bodies end up in military hospitals and what happened to the corpses afterwards?

To verify the photographs, Human Rights Watch conducted in depth investigations into the cases of 27 deaths in detention of people whose bodies appeared in the photographs. The investigations included examination of evidence provided by families of the deceased and fellow detainees. Human Rights Watch also examined photographs of the 27 detainees before their arrest and compared them to the photographs of their dead bodies smuggled out of Syria by Caesar.

The search for relatives of dead detainees whose photographs were included in the Caesar images was facilitated by the fact that in March 2015, several thousand photographs of the dead detainees were posted online by the SAFMCD, published in the Syrian electronic news source Zaman al-Wasl, and picked up by various other Facebook groups dedicated to people disappeared, detained, or killed in Syria. Though media outlets around the world had already covered the story of the Caesar photographs in January 2014, and published redacted or blurred versions showing groups of emaciated bodies, the March 2015 publication was the first time families could search for their relatives among the photographs. Many relatives of detainees, as well as activists and friends, spent days going through the photographs looking for missing relatives. Some of them contacted the SAFMCD directly, and after providing evidence that they were family members of the deceased, received the full set of photographs depicting their relative.

Human Rights Watch was able to verify 27 cases of detainees whose family members’ statements regarding their arrest and physical characteristics matched the photographic evidence. The 27 cases included those of a 14-year-old boy and a woman. Both these cases are described in this report. To help identify the 27 victims, Human Rights Watch researchers asked families for identifying characteristics including birthmarks, scars, and tattoos; noted and compared the dates of arrest and the date linked to the victim’s photograph; and sought out evidence from former detainees who saw the victim in detention.

In eight cases, former detainees saw the victims in detention, and in four cases, former detainees witnessed their death or saw their body. In some cases documented in this report, families obtained from the SAFMCD photographs showing their relative’s full body and were thus able to make positive identifications based on their clothing or other distinguishing marks not visible in the photographs available online. Out of the 27 identified cases, eight families consented to the publication of details of their relatives’ stories. These cases are outlined in this report.

In total, this report is based on 27interviews with family members of detainees who died in detention facilities, 37 former detainees, and four defectors who worked in Syrian government detention centers or military hospitals in Damascus.

Syrian civil society groups identified many more victims, in addition to those cases analyzed by Human Rights Watch. The SAFMCD, the group that initially published the photographs, told Human Rights Watch that more than 700 families got in touch with them saying that they recognized their missing relatives in the photographs of the dead detainees. Only one in ten families were willing to speak about their relative’s death publicly, for fear of reprisals against them or their family members that remained in Syria, according to SAFMCD.

Human Rights Watch also sought to verify the photographs through more technical means. While most of the photographs of the detainees lost their metadata when they were copied to be smuggled out of Syria, 271 photographs still had partial metadata indicating the four models of camera the photographs were taken with, as well as some dates. In July 2015, news reports emerged that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) analyzed a subset of the Caesar photographs, and found no evidence that they had been manipulated.

Finally, Human Rights Watch researchers also authenticated and reviewed a set of images of medical reports, death certificates, identity cards, and military orders included among the collection Caesar smuggled out of Syria. These documents provided further evidence the photographs originated from Syrian military hospitals, and that they were taken following written orders from Syria’s military judicial authority. Military orders confirmed that security branches transferred bodies to the military hospitals for registration and burial.

Causes of Death

Human Rights Watch shared a subset of 72 photographs, representing 19 victims including those profiled in this report, with Physicians for Human Rights for the purpose of forensic analysis. Physicians for Human Rights’ team of forensic pathologists reviewed the images for evidence of torture and cause of death. They found evidence of violent blunt force trauma, suffocation, starvation, and in one case due to a gunshot wound to the head. In some of the photographs Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights reviewed, detainees’ bodies showed large open head wounds, gunshot wounds, or dried blood coming from bodily cavities. Many of the photographs show emaciated bodies as well as marks of torture.

A doctor working for the SAFMCD (not a forensic expert) reviewed all 28,707 of the detainee photographs logging characteristics that he saw. According to his analysis, more than 40 percent of the bodies are emaciated, with sharply defined rib cages, prominent pelvic bones, and sunken faces. One woman and approximately 100 boys, whom the doctor identified by indicators, such as facial and body hair, appear among the images of the dead, according to the SAFMCD’s analysis.

To further understand how the detainees from the Caesar photographs may have died, Human Rights Watch investigated the conditions in Damascus security branches, including four of the security branches in which the largest number of photographed victims were held:

The notorious 215 Branch (operated by Military Intelligence), which many former detainees called the “Branch of Death”

The 227 or “Area” Branch (Military Intelligence)

The Air Force Intelligence Branch in Damascus, and

Branch 235 (Military Intelligence) known as the Palestine Branch.

We interviewed 37 former detainees as well as two former guards from Damascus security branches. To understand what medical treatment was available, how detainees were treated, and what happened to detainees after they died researchers also interviewed two former military officers who served at Harasta and 601 (Mezze) military hospitals, and a former nurse from Tishreen military hospital. In particular, Human Rights Watch interviewed defectors and nurses who had firsthand information about the numbering system used to keep track of detainees.

Authorities held detainees in inhumane conditions, keeping them in filthy, overcrowded cells for months or even years. Detainees said they were provided with such insufficient food that they slowly starved; one former detainee said he lost 35 kilos, nearly half his body weight, in just six months of detention. Two men interviewed for this report, who had been detained in the Palestine Branch, said they could wash two times a week by purchasing soap from their guards; all the others said they spent months without soap and that guards didn’t allow them to bathe. All detainees interviewed said they had almost no ventilation in their cells, which stayed overheated and humid. Some detainees said the heat and humidity was so high that their clothes disintegrated after a few weeks in detention.

With detainees weak from lack of food, air, and rest, and living in such cramped conditions, disease spread easily. The trauma of detention, as well as the torture many detainees underwent, also led to mental distress, including cases of serious mental illness. Former detainees we interviewed for this report, including two detained doctors, said the following causes of death in detention were common:

Gastrointestinal infections, sometimes involving severe diarrhea and dehydration,

Skin disease leading to infection,

Torture,

Mental distress that led detainees to refuse to eat and drink, and

Chronic diseases (like hypertension, diabetes, asthma, or kidney disease) for which detainees did not receive the necessary medication or treatment.

Authorities provided detainees with grossly inadequate medical care in detention. Some witnesses said that sick detainees only received paracetamol, an over-the-counter painkiller, and even that only in severe cases. Others said that while doctors were sometimes available in some branches, the doctors also beat and abused detainees to the point that detainees chose not to seek their attention. A defector who spent over seven years as a guard in the al-Khatib branch of State Security in Damascus told Human Rights Watch he had to ask the head of the branch repeatedly to get even a single painkiller for a prisoner. A few detainees Human Rights Watch interviewed said they were transferred to 601 or Tishreen military hospitals for treatment, but described abusive conditions in which guards handcuffed them to hospital beds, beat, and otherwise abused them. Defectors confirmed accounts of such abuses at these facilities.

Former detainees also described various types of torture in security branches including shabeh (suspending detainees by their wrists for hours or days); beating detainees on their heads or chests with PVC pipes, whipping with steel cables, electrocution, and burning. Detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that interrogators or guards in their branches beat detainees to death, hung them, or left them to die after severe bouts of torture.

Procedures After Death

After a detainee died, security branch guards transported the body to military hospitals where they would place it in a morgue or, when the number of bodies outstripped a hospital’s capacity, in an open-air garage. According to two defectors who served in two different military hospitals, after their facilities collected a group of detainees’ bodies, a forensic doctor would come to the morgue or courtyard and give each corpse a specific “examination number” (which appears along with a detainee’s detention facility number and a detainee number assigned by that facility in the Caesar photographs). Then the doctor would write a medical report, allow the body to be photographed by a military forensic photographer, and order conscripts to wrap the body in plastic sheeting. According to Fahed al-Mahmoud, a defector who served in the Harasta military hospital, these medical reports typically cited the cause of death as heart failure. Caesar, according to the international legal team that interviewed him, also said that regardless of actual cause of death medical reports only cited two causes of death: heart failure or respiratory failure. Human Rights Watch reviewed three death certificates that listed one of these two causes, but none that cited other causes of death.

A defector from the 601 Military Hospital, where hundreds of the bodies from the Caesar photographs were taken, told Human Rights Watch he personally witnessed two of these “processing sessions,” and helped carry bodies into trucks after they finished. Human Rights Watch also reviewed photographs of written orders from security branches and from military officials requiring military hospitals to examine the bodies and send them for burial. Some of the images of these documents were included among the Caesar photographs, others were provided independently to Human Rights Watch by a defector.

The two defectors Human Rights Watch interviewed who served at military hospitals said that soldiers transported the bodies to mass graves located on military land in the greater Damascus area, including near the Najha cemetary, near the Third Brigade military base, and near the Dhamir military airport. Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm these claims.

Families interviewed for this report spent months or years searching for their sons, their spouses, and their relatives and friends. Many of them paid millions of Syrian pounds in bribes to various government and security officers. Though most families did not approach the notorious security branches for fear of being arrested; those who did register official demands for information received almost no information as to how their relative had died. Some received death certificates that simply stated the deceased had died of heart or respiratory failure. None of the families interviewed for this report received the bodies of their relatives for burial.

To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, no independent investigation has been launched into the death of a prisoner in government custody, nor has the government published the results of any internal investigations it may have conducted. International human rights and humanitarian groups and the United Nations have repeatedly called upon the Government of Syria to grant them access to the security branch detention centers, to improve detainees’ conditions, and to cease torturing detainees. Despite these repeated calls, torture remains a constant in the detention centers. The systematic patterns of deliberate ill-treatment and torture that Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups have documented point clearly to a state policy of torture and ill-treatment and therefore constitute a crime against humanity.

The evidence of the Caesar photographs together with the specific, organized, and repeated processes for processing the bodies of detainees documented by Human Rights Watch and others also indicate a state policy of failing to investigate deaths in detention and to alleviate conditions leading to such deaths, and indeed a policy of enabling and facilitating mass deaths in state custody. Given that the bodies were photographed and registered weekly at military hospitals in the Syrian capital, the heads of detention facilities and military hospitals, as well as their commanding officers, knew or should have known of these mass deaths. Any acts within the detention centers that were part of a state policy of murder, torture or otherwise intentionally causing great suffering, could amount to a crime against humanity, and commanders who knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent or prosecute them could be criminally liable.

Crimes against humanity can be committed both in times of peace and in situations of armed conflict and consist of specific acts committed on a widespread or systematic basis as part of an “attack on a civilian population,” meaning there is some degree of planning or policy to commit the crime. Such crimes include murder, torture and inhumane acts “intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

Liability for the commission of crimes against humanity is not limited to those who carry out the acts, but also those who order, assist, or are otherwise complicit in the crimes. Under the principle of command responsibility, military and civilian officials up to the top of the chain of command can be held criminally responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates when they knew or should have known that such crimes were being committed, but failed to take reasonable measures to stop them.

In a January 2015 interview with Foreign Affairs, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded to allegations that prisoners have been tortured and abused by Syria, saying: “if there’s any unbiased and fair way to verify all those allegations, of course we are ready. That would be in our interest.”

Since the end of October, a group of countries known as the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), including Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States, have held meetings in Vienna to push for renewed peace negotiations in Syria. Human Rights Watch calls on these governments to ensure that these negotiations put an immediate end to rampant abuse and torture in detention facilities by pushing for the release of all arbitrarily held detainees and demanding access for international monitors to all detention centers in Syria. As a minimum part of any transitional process in Syria, all individuals against whom there is credible evidence of involvement in torture and other serious crimes should not have positions of authority in or over the detention system.

The UN Security Council should follow up on its Resolution 2139 which strongly condemned the arbitrary detention and torture of civilians in Syria, as well as kidnappings, abductions, and forced disappearances, by demanding that Syria grant recognized international monitors access to all detention facilities, official and unofficial, without prior notification. Furthermore the Security Council should adopt targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in abuses and should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Syrian and international groups working on the disappeared in Syria should establish a unified system for logging all cases of missing persons in Syria, as well as information regarding unidentified human remains or mass grave sites. It should act as a repository of all available information, including from the Caesar photographs, regarding the fate of the disappeared in Syria in order to facilitate future identification and repatriation procedures.

Russia and Iran, as the most prominent backers of the Syrian government, in addition to supporting the recommendations above, should pressure the government to publish the names of all individuals who died in Syrian detention facilities immediately, and to take all feasible steps to inform families of the deceased and return the bodies to their relatives.

The Syrian government should provide immediate and unhindered access for recognized international detention monitors to all detention facilities, official and unofficial, without prior notification, including those mentioned in this report. The government should ensure that children are not detained together with adults and are only detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time. The government should release all arbitrarily detained persons including persons detained solely for their political beliefs, and should immediately halt the practice of enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and detention, and the use of torture.

All countries committed to ending mass deaths of detainees in Syria, as well as widespread torture and abuse of detainees, should exercise universal or other forms of jurisdiction as provided under international and domestic law to investigate and, evidence permitting, prosecute Syrian military and civilian officials alleged to have been involved in criminal offences against detainees in Syria in violation of international law.

Recommendations

To Members of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) which have been Meeting in Vienna to Push for a Syrian Peace Process

Demand that, as a minimum part of any transitional process in Syria, in order to put an immediate end to rampant abuse and torture in detention facilities: Individuals against whom there is credible evidence of involvement in torture and other serious crimes do not have positions of authority in or over the detention system; Efforts are made to ensure speedy accountability for the widespread abuses in Syria’s detention facilities; Arbitrary detention is clearly banned and no detention is permissible without a clear legal basis, including a clear date for expiry of authorisation to detain. All arbitrarily held detainees are immediately released; Independent inspection monitors are given access to all detention centers in Syria. All detention centers are open to visitors, including legal representatives; All detainees are brought promptly before a regular criminal court judge to determine the legality of their detention.

Support the creation of a legally-recognized organization or institution in charge of investigating the fate of the disappeared, as well as unidentified human remains and mass graves in Syria. Such an institution should have a broad mandate to investigate, including the ability to review all official records, interview any official, and have access to the scientific, technical, and legal means, necessary for forensic identification and repatriation of human remains.

To the UN Security Council

Demand that Syria grant recognized international detention monitors access to all detention facilities, official and unofficial, without prior notification, including those mentioned in this report;

Refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC);

Adopt targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in abuses;

Require states to suspend all military sales and assistance, including technical training and services, to the Syrian government as well as to any armed group credibly implicated in the commission of serious human rights violations, given the real risk that the weapons and technology will be used in the commission of serious human rights violations;

Demand that Syria cooperate fully with the UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry;

Demand access for humanitarian missions, foreign journalists, and independent human rights organizations.

To Syrian and International Groups Working on the Missing in Syria

Establish a unified system for logging all cases of missing persons in Syria, as well as information regarding unidentified human remains or mass grave sites. It should act as a repository of all available information, including from the Caesar photographs, regarding the fate of the disappeared in Syria in order to facilitate future identification and repatriation procedures. The criteria for and collection of such data should be standardized to ensure the utility of the system. Relatives of the missing should be able to review information about their loved ones available in such a system.

To the Government of Syria

Publish official lists of all detainees who died in Syrian government detention facilities and prisons, including in security branches operated by Syrian intelligence agencies;

Publish official lists of all individuals currently in Syrian detention centers;

Immediately halt the practice of enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and detention, and the use of torture;

Issue death certificates for all detainees known to have died in custody based on thorough forensic examinations and make these documents readily accessible to families;

Provide immediate and unhindered access for recognized international monitors of detention conditions to all detention facilities, official and unofficial, without prior notification, including those mentioned in this report;

Provide detainees with food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength, of wholesome quality and well prepared and served, at regular intervals and make available drinking water to every detainee whenever he or she needs it, in accordance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners;

Provide detainees with adequate sanitary installations and regular access to bathing facilities, at a minimum of one time per week, in accordance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners;

Provide detainees with prompt and accessible health care, in accordance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners;

Release all arbitrarily detained persons including persons detained solely for their political beliefs;

Ensure that children are not detained in the same facilities as adults and that they are detained only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate time;

Suspend members of the security forces against whom there are credible allegations of human rights abuses, pending investigations;

Annul Legislative Decree No. 14, of January 15, 1969, and Legislative Decree 69, which provide immunity to members of the security forces by requiring a decree from the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces to prosecute any member of the internal security forces, Political Security, and customs police;

Provide immediate and unhindered access and cooperation to independent observers, journalists, and human rights monitors, including the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; the UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

To Russia and Iran

As the main backers of the Syrian government,

Urge Syria to implement the recommendations listed above, especially pressing for immediate and unhindered access for recognized international monitors of detention conditions to all detention facilities and for the release of all arbitrarily detained persons.

To All Countries

Acting individually, or jointly through regional mechanisms where appropriate, adopt, maintain, or strengthen targeted sanctions against Syrian officials credibly implicated in the ongoing serious violations of international human rights law;

Exercise universal jurisdiction or other forms of jurisdiction as provided under international and domestic law to investigate and, evidence permitting, prosecute Syrian military and civilian officials alleged to have been involved in criminal offences against detainees in Syria in violation of international law.

When permitted under domestic law, gather evidence that may be available within the country and that may be used in future criminal proceedings, should the suspects enter the territory, or to facilitate future prosecution elsewhere.

Call for the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC, as the forum most capable of effectively investigating and prosecuting those bearing the greatest responsibility for abuses in Syria.

Methodology

This report is based on 27 interviews with family members of detainees who died in detention facilities, 6 friends of the detainees, 37 former detainees, and four defectors who worked in Syrian government detention centers or military hospitals. The interviews were conducted in Lebanon and Turkey, as well as by phone with individuals who remain inside Syria. In total, 82 interviews were conducted for the report.

Interviews were primarily conducted in Arabic by Arabic-speaking researchers; some were conducted in English using an interpreter. In cases where we include photographs of deceased detainees, we have obtained written consent from an immediate family member, or a close family member in cases when no immediate family member remains alive. In all cases where we use interviewees’ real names, we have also obtained their consent to do so. Because of the danger of reprisals against those who spoke with us who remain in Syria, or against their families who remain in areas under government control, including in Syrian detention centers, many interviewees asked that we use pseudonyms. We have indicated each case in which we did not use the person’s real name. Interviewees received no compensation and were fully informed of the purpose of the interview and on how Human Rights Watch would use the information they provided.

Human Rights Watch received copies of 53,275 photographs from the Syrian National Movement (SNM), a Syrian anti-government political group which received the photographs from the military defector known as “Caesar.” The SNM transferred the photographs after a memorandum of understanding was concluded with Human Rights Watch, which stipulated the photographs be used only for research purposes. (See Background) According to the SNM, these photographs comprised the complete collection they received from Caesar. Researchers reviewed the collection of 28,707 photographs showing detainees who died in detention, as well as some of the 24,568 photographs depicting dead government soldiers and crime scenes (including incidents of terrorism, fires, explosions, and car bombs).

Human Rights Watch interviewed33 individuals who said they had identified photographs of their relatives or friends among the Caesar photographs. The victims’ family members provided us with photographs of their relatives before their arrest, and informed us of identifying features or marks that might appear on the deceased’s body. Researchers then compared this information to the photographs of the dead bodies. We also compared information about date of arrest, and any information the family provided on which security agency was detaining their relative. In some cases, family members learned from former detainees or through unofficial contacts with government officials that their relative was held in the facility later identified by its number in the Caesar photograph. In four cases, a former detainee witnessed an identified victim’s death in custody or saw the victim’s body in a detention facility after their death.

Human Rights Watch shared 72 photographs of victims identified by their families to researchers, including the victims profiled in this report, with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an independent human rights organization that uses medical expertise to document human rights abuses. Physicians for Human Rights produced an expert forensic report analyzing physical wounds and characteristics visible in these photographs, and whether any of these injuries was a likely cause of death. They conducted their analysis as follows:

The overall method of analysis of the digital photographs consisted of peer review of each photograph on a high definition screen with a group of forensic pathologists. The objective of this peer review was to identify injury on the exposed body surface, and attempt to predict the mechanism of injury and what role it played in the death of the detainee.

Their analysis, provided in written form to Human Rights Watch, is referenced throughout this report. Though PHR identified several types of injury and potential causes of death from the photographs, they noted that injuries including suffocation, cardio-respiratory failure, closed head injuries, and visceral blunt force trauma would not be evident from photographic analysis. They also noted that “none of the digital images showed the back of the body of the victims and therefore any injuries that may have been present on the back could not be evaluated.”

Though Human Rights Watch sought an interview with Caesar through groups that identified themselves as representing him, the organization did not manage to meet with him. Instead, researchers reviewed the transcript of his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as a summary of his interview with the international legal team that prepared an initial report on the photographs, and an interview published with him in The Guardian newspaper.

Finally, Human Rights Watch reviewed documents produced by defectors, reportedly from inside Syrian detention facilities or military hospitals. Some were included among the files Caesar took, and some were provided by a former State Security officer.

Using interviews with family members, former detainees, and defectors who identified locations visible in the photographs, Human Rights Watch determined the photographs to be an authentic record of prisoner deaths in Syrian government facilities.

Background: Enforced Disappearances, Torture and Deaths in Detention

Since the start of Syria’s uprising in March 2011, authorities have detained large numbers of detainees - estimated by local groups to be in the tens of thousands. The government has held these detainees in detention centers operated by Syria’s four main intelligence services, as well as in prisons.

Syria’s four main intelligence agencies, referred to collectively as the mukhabarat, are:

the Department of Military Intelligence

the Political Security Directorate

the General Intelligence Directorate (known as State Security)

the Air Force Intelligence Directorate

Intelligence agencies overlap extensively, and there are no clear rules for which agency will take the lead in a particular action. These agencies have virtually unlimited de facto authority to carry out arrests, searches, interrogation, and detention. They are more than a simple arm of the government; they are in practice autonomous entities that report directly to the highest officials in the Syrian state, and according to some analysts, directly to the President. Prior to the uprising in Syria, these agencies competed at times with each other for custody of detainees or the right to interrogate them. However, after 2011, they began working more in concert. The Syrian Crisis Management Cell, a coordinating body headed by Bashar al-Assad and including the heads of all four security agencies, began meeting regularly.

Each of these four agencies maintains central branches in Damascus as well as regional, city, and local branches across the country. Some of the branches are known or referred to by the name of the area they are located in while others are known by the branch number (such as Branch 215 or 235).

In virtually all of these branches, there are detention facilities of varying size. In some cases, when the detention facilities of certain branches run out of space, branches transfer detainees to other detention centers, such as prisons or military bases, but continue to be considered the party holding such detainees. These transferred prisoners were referred to as “deposits,” (Ida` in Arabic) according to a former guard at al-Khatib branch of State Security in Damascus.

Detainees in Syrian intelligence facilities are invariably held in incommunicado detention. They have no official means of communicating with their families, and only in extremely rare circumstances can they access unofficial means, for example by bribing guards to make phone calls. Families interviewed for this report relied on information provided by former detainees who, when released, contacted families of others they met in detention centers and updated them on their status. Only after they are transferred to central prisons such as `Adra were detainees sometimes permitted to have family visits.

The majority of the cases of detention by the intelligence agencies documented by Human Rights Watch over the last four years can be described as enforced disappearances. In international law this is when state agents or other persons acting with the support of the state detain someone and then refuse to acknowledge the detention, or conceal his or her fate or whereabouts.[5] In most of the detention cases documented by Human Rights Watch since the uprising in Syria, the detainees’ families had no information about their fate or whereabouts for weeks or, in many cases, months following the arrest, despite their inquiries with various intelligence agencies. The authorities generally did not allow detainees while still in the custody of the security agencies to have any contact with the outside world and left their families wondering whether their detained relatives were alive or dead.

Human Rights Watch, other local and international human rights groups and the UN Commission of Inquiry have documented systemic human rights abuses of detainees including torture as well as inadequate access to food and medical treatment since anti-government demonstrations broke out in March 2011. In 2012, Human Rights Watch documented the systematic use of specific forms of torture by security force officers and interrogators in 27 separate Syrian detention facilities. According to our interviews with former detainees over the last four years, authorities have detained people in increasingly abhorrent conditions, subjecting them to overcrowding, lack of food, inadequate ventilation, poor medical services, and extremely poor sanitary conditions that caused detainees to develop infections, skin diseases, and diarrhea.

Former detainees usually distinguished between what they called common cells and individual cells. The size of the common cells varied, measuring up to 70 square meters. For example, two former detainees told Human Rights Watch that a common cell measuring about 20 square meters in Military Intelligence Branch 291 in Damascus held 60-75 people.

Former detainees explained to Human Rights Watch that what they called individual cells were often small rooms measuring one to two square meters, many with a hole in the middle of the ground for a toilet. While in some cases former detainees reported being held alone in such cells, most of the detainees interviewed said that these individual cells usually held several people. Both in the common and individual cells, the overcrowding was such that in many cases the detainees could only stand inside their cells, or had to take turns sleeping. (For more details on detention conditions, see Section III.)

Human Rights Watch researchers visited the State Security and Military Intelligence facilities in Raqqa in April 2013 after armed groups took control of the city and found that the prison cells, interrogation rooms, and torture devices they saw in these facilities were consistent with what former detainees had described.[8]

Human Rights Watch documented the deaths of prisoners in Syrian government detention facilities before Syria’s uprising, and has documented increasing numbers of deaths in detention since 2011.[9] Authorities rarely provided families with information on the circumstances surrounding the deaths and, to Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, no independent investigation has been launched into the death of a prisoner in government custody.[10]

In 2011 Human Rights Watch documented cases in which families of detainees who had died in detention received their relatives’ bodies if they signed statements that “armed gangs” had killed their relatives and promised not to hold public funerals. However, very few families interviewed in later years received their relatives’ bodies.[11] Some received death certificates, but no personal effects or remains.[12]

Given the lack of access for independent observers, the near-complete secrecy surrounding detentions and detention facilities in Syria, and government authorities’ refusal to provide families with official information about their detained relatives in many cases, it is virtually impossible to establish how many people have died in Syrian detention centers since anti-government protests started in March 2011.

As of July 24, 2015, the Syrian Violations Documenting Center had documented 7,502 cases of individuals who died in detention. The Syrian Network for Human Rights documented 11,358 deaths in detention as of June 26, 2015. The total number is likely higher given that many cases go unreported.

Human Rights Watch has also documented arbitrary detention and torture by non-state armed groups in Syria, including in March 2014. However, in this report we have focused on investigating the Caesar photographs, which represent a unique source of evidence pointing towards crimes against humanity.

I. Caesar Photographs

Caesar’s Story and the Public Posting of the Images

In January 2014, a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts released a report assessing “the credibility of a defector from Syria whose occupation prior to his defection was in the service of the military police of the Syrian government,” who had “during the course of his work, smuggled out some tens of thousands of images of corpses so photographed by his colleagues and himself.”[14] In total, the experts reported that approximately 55,000 photographs had been smuggled by the defector, whom they gave the codename “Caesar,” as well as other Syrians. The experts interviewed “Caesar,” examined his military credentials, and conducting forensic analysis on a sample of 5,500 photographs (which they estimated represented 1,300 bodies). They found that 42 percent of the bodies were emaciated and 20 percent showed signs of “inflicted trauma.” They also observed that many individuals “showed evidence of discoloration and ulceration primarily in the foot and shin region.” An appendix included selected photographs from the set, demonstrating the forensic categories they noted. The report had been commissioned by Carter-Ruck and Co., a law firm in London, hired by the Qatari government. The involvement of Qatar, a government known for its support of armed anti-government groups in Syria, led some to question the impartiality of the effort.

In his interview with the investigators’ legal team, conducted over the course of three days in January 2014, Caesar told the team he had worked in the Syrian military police for 13 years. For the last three years before his defection, his job had been to photograph and document bodies of detainees who had been killed, he told the team. The exact purpose of the photographs is not clear. In an interview with a journalist, Caesar himself indicated that he “often wondered” about the reason but that in his view, “the regime documents everything so that it will forget nothing. Therefore, it documents these deaths…If one day the judges have to reopen cases, they’ll need them.”

Caesar described how he began sending copies of the photographs he took on flash drives to a trusted contact who was also his relative. In August 2013, fearing “imminent danger on my life,” Caesar decided to flee the country.

The images gained a lot of media attention. On April 2014, members of the UN Security Council viewed a selection of the photographs, and on July 31, 2014, Caesar testified before the U.S. House of Representatives.[18] In his testimony, Caesar stated that he was responsible for photographing bodies in the Damascus, Damascus countryside, and sometimes in the Daraa suburbs, as well as for overseeing the archiving of military forensic photographs from all over Syria.[19] He said that he began saving the photographs he took as well as other photographs from the government archive on memory sticks or burning them onto CDs. He did so sporadically, and the selection was relatively random. Some files were lost or corrupted in the transfer process.[20] In August 2013, he defected from Syria, taking the files he had managed to copy over more than two years with him.[21]

The Syrian authorities immediately denied the veracity of the photographs. The Ministry of Justice dismissed the report as “baseless” and “politicized” and said it lacked objectivity and professionalism. As reported by the state controlled Syrian news agency (SANA) the ministry’s statement alleged that a number of the photographs were of “foreign terrorists from several nationalities who died when attacking the military checkpoints and civil institutions,” and that others were of “civilians and military personnel who were tortured and killed by the armed terrorist groups because of their support to the state.”[22]

President Assad repeated such denial in January 2015 in an interview with Foreign Affairs:

The pictures are not clear which person they show. They’re just pictures of a head, for example, with some skulls. Who said this is done by the government, not by the rebels? Who said this is a Syrian victim, not someone else? [23]

Assad’s questions were about to be answered. A number of the Caesar photographs had been leaked to some pro-opposition media outlets in January 2014 and some relatives of missing detainees had reportedly identified them. In March 2015, the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD) released thousands of the photographs online. Other Syrian activists and civil society groups published some of these photographs through Facebook groups or web pages they administered. The photographs, published from a much larger set of approximately 50,000 photographs, showed individuals, nearly all of them adult men, who died in Syrian detention centers.[24] For the most part they did not display the full bodies of the victims, but only their faces and heads.[25] They spread quickly as Syrians searched for family members, relatives, or friends who had been detained by the government, or who had simply disappeared.

Families who had had no news of their loved ones in government detention, as well as those whose relatives had disappeared, began searching through the files. Many of them came forward, saying they had recognized husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, who, they believed, had disappeared in Syrian detention centers. The SAFMDC told Human Rights Watch that more than 700 families had contacted them saying that they had identified their relatives.

In addition, other Syrian human rights groups were also contacted by relatives or friends who said they had identified relatives or friends in the photographs. A monitoring group called the Syrian Human Rights Commission said it had identified 101 individuals included among the Caesar photographs through their family members or friends; the Damascus Media Center said it had identified 286 cases.[28]

Human Rights Watch Analysis of Caesar Photographs

Caesar entrusted the images to the Syrian National Movement (SNM), an opposition political group. Members of that group formed the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD), including Dr. Emad ad-Din al-Rashid (head of the SNM’s political office) which took custody of the files. In March 2015, the SNM gave 53,275 unique files to Human Rights Watch, stating that these files represented the complete set of the data Caesar collected. They transferred the photograph after concluding a memorandum of understanding with Human Rights Watch stipulating that the photographs could only be used for research purposes. Human Rights Watch later learned that the SNM shared the photographs with a limited set of groups, including the U.S. State Department, as well as the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, also after concluding written agreements or understandings as to how the photographs could be used.

According to the dates on the folders, which Human Rights Watch was told are the same folders that Caesar initially copied from government computers, the photographs were taken between May 2011 and August 2013. The photographs stopped when Caesar defected in August 2013. According to partial metadata that is still intact on 271 of the photographic files, the photographers used Nikon CoolPix and Fuji FinePix model cameras. Across the collection of photographs, some of the photographs had been resized and in a few cases a rudimentary drawing program had been used to enhance the numbers that appear in the photographs.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Digital Evidence Laboratory analyzed a subset of 242 Caesar photographs, and found in a report it issued (but did not release to the general public) that “the bodies and scenes depicted…exhibit no artifacts or inconsistencies that would indicate that they have been manipulated.” Of the 242 sample images the FBI examined for its report, 22 photographs “have been altered through the addition of text to a card in the scene, but this alteration had no effect on the bodies or the remainder of the scene depicted therein.”

The photographs received by Human Rights Watch contain three different categories.

The first category, made up of 28,707 photographs, are images of dead people photographed either in a morgue or in what looks like a garage. What distinguishes this batch of photographs is that most of the bodies in them have three separate identification numbers, either written directly on the body or on a paper that is placed on the body or held up so as to appear in the photograph. Based on all available information, these photographs are of detainees who died in detention or after being transferred from detention to a military hospital. The first category is what has received most media attention.

The second category are also photographs of dead people taken in morgues except that those photographed are identified by name or circumstance of death. This category consists of photographs of people identified as dead government soldiers, other armed fighters or civilians who died as a result of attacks, explosions, or assassination attempts. Unlike the photographs in the first category, there are no numbers associated with the bodies, but rather their full name written on a piece of paper and photographed. For dead soldiers, the word “martyr” ( shahid in Arabic) is usually written before the name as well as sometimes the rank. For civilians, the photographs are organized by date and name. The photographs of soldiers’ bodies were taken inside a morgue.

in Arabic) is usually written before the name as well as sometimes the rank. For civilians, the photographs are organized by date and name. The photographs of soldiers’ bodies were taken inside a morgue. A third category consists of photographs of the sites of military attacks. The date range appears to begin in May 2011, according to the dating on the folders, and again goes until August 2013, when Caesar defected.

Finally, the smuggled photographs include a few photographs of death certificates, memos between arms of the intelligence services, and internal reports on detainee deaths.

This report focuses on deaths in detention. However other types of photographs are also important. From an evidentiary perspective, they reinforce the credibility of the claims of Caesar about his role as a forensic photographer of the Syrian security forces or at least with someone who has access to their photographs. In addition, the photographs could also help in documenting other crimes that took place in Syria.

Photographs of Dead Detainees

According to the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD), the Syrian organization which reviewed the entire collection and logged the photographs by individual body found, many bodies were photographed multiple times. Typically the photographs of dead detainees include four photographs were taken of each body, but sometimes over 20 photographs. Thus according to SAFMDC the 28,707 photographs in the category of dead detainees correspond to at least 6,786 dead individuals. While Human Rights Watch did not do its own separate log of bodies, it had access to the SAFMCD database and can confirm that their analysis appears to have been diligent. The photographs usually try to capture any tattoo or wound on the body. However, they generally fell short of international standards for forensic photographs taken in the context of crime scene investigations. According to the international team of forensic experts who initially evaluated the photographs:

The images were not produced in the manner of evidentiary photographs as would be taken by crime scene investigators ….the images did not bear a scale and there were no close-up images of individual injuries. The majority of the images did not show the back of the body of the deceased and therefore any injuries that may have been present at the back of the body could not be assessed. [32]

Of the victims shown, only one is female and the remainder male. Of the 6,785 male bodies, a doctor who reviewed the photographs told Human Rights Watch that at least 100 appear to be children.[33] Human Rights Watch verified two cases of boys under 18 who died in detention and appeared among the photographs through their family members, but did not independently review the total photo set to assess the age of the victims.

Some of the folders in which the earlier photographs were filed as well as some of the early file names incorporate the names of those killed. For example, one folder is named “Photographs of the Incident of Death of the Security Prisoner Ismail Moumneh.” An online search by Human Rights Watch revealed that Ismail Moumneh was an anti-government protester from the town of Qatana near the Lebanese border who died in August 2011.[34] Media reports from the time state that government authorities detained Moumneh and that he died “under torture.”[35]Other folders are simply named as “security prisoner under the responsibility of” either the Air Force Intelligence or General Security (mukhabarat ‘amah). Some of the men photographed in August and September 2011 are still wearing their clothing and all of them were photographed in a morgue.

The numbering of bodies first appears in photographs filed in the folder marked October 2011. It is in these photographs that white cards placed on the body appear in photographs for the first time. The cards in the photographs in this folder have numbers in single digits upon them. The folder contains photographs of the bodies of detainees that are labeled numbers one and two. The cards also refer to their detention by Air Force Intelligence, either by writing the words out on the card, or by using the Arabic letter ج , the first letter of “Air Force” in Arabic. “Security prisoner” number three appears in a folder dated November 2011. In the same month, however, some detainees’ names are included in the folder name for the photographs of their bodies. The body of another detainee numbered “one” also appears in this folder. Some of these early detainees appear to have been treated in a hospital, as intravenous lines or defibrillator pads are still visible in the photographs.

The file names continue to incorporate some names of deceased detainees until May 2012. Seven prisoners were named, until this date. Several months are missing from the collection of folders. Until the folder named August 2012, pictures were taken indoors, in what appears to be a morgue. In November 2012, bodies were photographed on an asphalt surface. That same month, the first photographs appear that were taken in the courtyard Human Rights Watch identified as a garage on the grounds of the 601 Military Hospital in Mezze.

Caesar told the U.S. House of Representatives that “We used to use the morgue, but they were bringing way more bodies, so we decided to start using the garage.”[36] Using satellite imagery and geolocation techniques, Human Rights Watch confirmed that the courtyard photographs were taken in the courtyard of Military Hospital 601 in Mezze, Damascus. A folder of photographs in the second category, showing government soldiers, is labeled “Teshrieen Hospital,” [Tishreen Hospital] indicating that they were taken in another military hospital in Damascus.

Nearly all of the folders in which photographs were filed were named by date. Many of the folders were named simply by a month and a year (beginning in May 2011), while some were labeled with a specific date. Based on conversations with SAFMCD staff who interacted with Caesar, as well as on the cases we investigated, Human Rights Watch believes these dates mostly correspond to the months when the bodies were photographed and registered in the military hospital (See Section IV, Procedures After Death). However, the filing system does not appear to be exact and some of the photographs appear in undated folders.

The images we viewed showed that many of the bodies are emaciated, and show bruises, scars, and other marks of torture. Some show deep open wounds.

In the photographs, most bodies appear with a white plaster on their foreheads that indicates two numbers, or sometimes two numbers written directly on their bodies in marker. A piece of paper held over their chest area that repeats the two numbers present on the body, and adds a third.

Human Rights Watch’s research indicates that these three numbers represent:

The branch number: a number assigned to each security branch facility operated by Syrian intelligence services, e.g. Branch 215 (operated by Military Intelligence)

The detainee number: a number assigned to each detainee by the security branch that holds him in custody. While Caesar testified that the number was assigned at the time of the detainee’s arrival at the security branch, another defector who served as a guard at a security branch told Human Rights Watch that the security branch would assign these numbers when a detainee died in custody. Given that most of these numbers appear chronologically, it is likely that the number was assigned to the detainee following his death.

The examination number or death number: a number assigned to each detainee by the forensic doctor of the military hospital, given at the time the doctor registered the body, prepared a medical report on it, and ordered a military photographer (such as Caesar) to photograph the body. A security agency defector who served in a military hospital told Human Rights Watch that military hospital employees called this the “examination number.” [37]

The first two numbers were written on either a medical plaster affixed to a detainee’s body, or written in marker on the head or chest of the body, inside the security branches before a body were transferred to hospital custody.

The SAFMCD, which reviewed the entire collection, told Human Rights Watch that the examination number reaches 5,000 and then repeats with a letter after it: 5000a, 5000b, and so on. Based on the sequences of these examination numbers, they believed that the Caesar photographs indicate at least 11,000 bodies were photographed in Damascus military hospitals between May 2011 and August 2013, when Caesar defected. The photographs that Human Rights Watch reviewed show 6,786 bodies, according to a comprehensive analysis conducted by the SAFMCD.

Some of the earlier photographs of detainees include cards that display their names, rather than the three numbers described above.

It is important to note that the Caesar photographs do not represent a comprehensive record of all deaths in detention in the Damascus area for the 27 month period they cover.

While many detention facilities in Damascus sent their dead to Tishreen and 601 military hospital, a defector from Syria’s State Security services who worked as a guard at the al-Khatib branch of State Security told Human Rights Watch that those who died in detention at the facility where he worked were transferred to Harasta military hospital in the northeastern suburbs of Damascus and not to Tishreen and 601 military hospitals where Caesar had taken the photographs. Moreover, the photographs are not comprehensive of all the bodies that were transferred to Tishreen and 601 military hospital but represent the photographs Caesar had access to and copied when he felt he could do so with relative safety. Therefore, the number of bodies from detention facilities that appear in the Caesar photographs represent only a part of those who died in detention in Damascus, or even in these particular facilities, between May 2011 and August 2013.

According to the branch numbers on these cards, by far the largest number of detainees (4,551 detainees) came from the Military Intelligence 215 Branch in Damascus, known among many Syrians as “the Branch of Death.”[38] The second largest number (2,819 detainees) were transferred from the Military Intelligence 227 Branch (known as the Region Branch―Fir` al-Mantiqa).[39]Hundreds of detainees were also transferred from the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Branch, the Military Intelligence Branch 235 also known as the Palestine Branch and the 216 (Patrols) Branch, also operated by Military Intelligence.

Based on the branch numbers indicated, as well as the testimony of Caesar himself, the bodies came almost exclusively from facilities located in the greater Damascus area.[40]

Many of the photographs were taken in the garage of the 601 military hospital at Mezze, an area southwest of central Damascus where a military base and airport, as well as the presidential palace, are also located. A military conscript who defected from the hospital after living and working there for two years and three months described the facility in detail to Human Rights Watch, and identified the garage where the photographs were taken on a map.

He said he personally witnessed officers storing bodies in the garage, and hospital employees “processing” and photographing the bodies on multiple occasions.[41]

Photographs were also taken in the morgue at 601 military hospital and in the morgue of Tishreen military hospital, according to defectors from these facilities, and according to the file names on the photographs. Both hospitals are in Damascus. Some photographs may have been taken in the Harasta military hospital in a northeastern suburb of the capital, which also received the bodies of dead detainees for processing, but Human Rights Watch could not confirm whether Harasta military hospital photographs were included in the Caesar collection. Intelligence branches in Damascus and the Damascus countryside brought detainees’ bodies to these three military hospitals.

II. Naming the Dead: Profiles of Victims from the Caesar Photographs

Human Rights Watch interviewed 27 separate families who said they recognized their relatives among the Caesar photographs, as well as nine former detainees who said they recognized and spent time in detention with victims from the photographs. However, only eight of the families agreed to publish information about their relative’s death; the others feared for the safety of family members who remained in government-controlled areas, or of relatives who remain in Syria’s detention centers. Their fears are not unfounded: several of the former detainees we interviewed said they were arrested in place of a relative who was wanted by the government, or simply for being a family member of a wanted individual.

When interviewing the family members or former detainees who recognized victims from the photographs, researchers asked them to provide photographs of their relatives before their arrest and compared them to the Caesar photograph; to indicate if they had any identifying marks or tattoos or pre-existing health conditions; and to give the date of their relative’s arrest, as well as any information they learned from former detainees who saw their relative in detention. When we could reach these former detainees, we interviewed them as well for additional information regarding the victim’s treatment in detention, their physical appearance and clothing, the detention center and cell they were detained in, and the dates they were held in that location. We then compared this information to the dates and detention facility numbers that made up the file names of the Caesar photographs. In most cases, the detention facility numbers also appeared on the white cards included in each photograph.

While researchers took great care to carefully probe and verify each family’s claim to have identified their relative among the photographs, verification of this nature remains challenging due to the dramatic physical changes some detainees experienced, as well as the poor quality of the photographs distributed online, and the deep emotional investments families have made in resolving their loved ones’ disappearances. Human Rights Watch believes that in each of the eight cases below there is a strong likelihood that the victim is indeed the person the families and in some cases former detainees recognize. However, a proper forensic matching will be needed in the future as a margin of error remains.

Among the deaths we investigated, we were able to confirm the deaths in detention of two children, of whom one is profiled below (aged 14 at the time of his arrest), and one woman.

In eight of the 27 cases verified, Human Rights Watch was also able to interview a former detainee who saw the deceased while he or she was alive in detention, learned their name and background, and made contact with the deceased’s family once he or she was released from detention. Former detainees provided valuable information about the deceased’s location as well as his or her physical and mental state. In four of the cases Human Rights Watch documented, former detainees knew the victim personally and saw the victim die, or viewed his dead body in the detention facility.

Abdullah Arslan al-Hariri

Abdullah Arslan al-Hariri, a 36 or 37 year old laborer from Namr, Daraa, was married, but had no children. According to his brother, Abdullah became a prominent leader of anti-government demonstrations in his hometown of Namr following the beginning of protests in 2011, and later began helping Syrian Army defectors who wished to leave the country.[44]Syrian security forces raided his house several times, but Abdullah was not at home during these raids.[45]

On June 16, 2012, the Military Police arrested Abdullah along with his relative, Tal`at.[46] There had been several military police raids in Namr that morning, Tal`at told Human Rights Watch, and he and Abdullah went to try and hide on the outskirts of the town. Military Police shot Abdullah in his shoulder as they tried to evade arrest and seized the two, handcuffed them, and blindfolded them with tape.

An officer told me to tie [Abdullah’s] shoulder with my shirt, which I did, but that is all. There were some thorns in the wound from his fall, but they did not allow me to clean it.

Tal`at and Abdullah were taken to the courtyard of the Military Police department in Izra`, also in Daraa governorate. Tal`at was blindfolded, and could only hear the police officers’ interrogation. He told Human Rights Watch:

When we were in the courtyard [of the Military Police department]…they insulted him, and I could hear that they were beating him. I could hear that he was in pain. Abdallah was interrogated about his participation in the protests. They hit him. They told him, “You are a fighter.” Abdallah responded, “No, I am not armed.” The last thing I heard was: “I have an injured terrorist, come and take him from here.” Then I heard the sound of a car, I am sure it was not an ambulance, because they were still yelling at him…. I never saw him again.

The General Intelligence branch released Tal`at a few days later. Fearing for their own safety, Abdullah’s family did not make official inquiries. They had no more news of him until the Caesar photographs were released. The family identified him from a set of photographs posted on Facebook.

The photographs of Abdullah’s body from the Caesar archive did not identify him as associated with any particular security branch. They appear in a folder dated June 2012, the month Abdullah was detained. The archive includes seven photographs of his body. The gunshot wound on his shoulder is clearly visible in some of the photographs. The file name states that he was “under the responsibility of the Ninth Brigade” (al-Firqah al-Tase`a), which operates in Daraa.

In a Physicians for Human Rights report on the the forensic analysis of the digital images (for which Human Rights Watch provided no background information specific to the individual), PHR’s team of forensic pathologists noted that the photographs depicted an adult man in his 30s with four gunshot wounds, including both entry and exit gunshot wounds to the head, the entry wound “suggestive of a close range entry,” as well as gunshots to the right shoulder and the right arm.

Khalid Hadla

Khalid Hadla was married and had three young children. He worked as a carpenter, and lived in Daraya, near Damascus. According to Amer Hadla, Khalid’s brother who lives outside of Syria, Air Force Intelligence officers arrested Khalid in January 2013 during a raid on his home, while his wife and children watched. In January 2013, government and anti-government forces were engaged in fierce battles for control of Daraya, with the Syrian army re-taking the town from anti-government armed groups early that month. Many people were arrested during this period.

Khalid’s brother told Human Rights Watch that the Hadla family was known in Daraya for being anti-government:

Everybody [in Daraya] supported the rebellion, even women they supported it. Our family Hadla is well-known as a supporter of the rebellion…the soldiers of the family that were in the Syrian army defected and became members of the FSA [Free Syrian Army].

However, he said that Khalid was known as the quiet one in the family, and only participated in peaceful protests. He added that a Syrian Air Force Intelligence officer in the area, Bashar Daher, threatened Khalid and other members of the Hadla family on multiple occasions, and made visits to Khalid’s house to threaten him, according to his family members in Daraya.

After Khalid’s arrest, the family later learned from former detainees who had seen Khalid in detention that he was detained at the Air Force Intelligence branch in Mezze.

Amer added that Daher, the officer, came to his other brothers after Khalid was detained. “He told them, ‘Khaled admitted everything under torture. We won’t give him back to you.’” A former detainee told the family they he saw Khalid in detention at the Air Force Intelligence facility in Mezze but provided little detail about Khalid’s well-being and condition in detention.

Amer added that after Khalid’s arrest and reported coerced confession, his remaining four brothers and his sister were all arrested; only one has since been released. The fate of the remaining four siblings remains unknown. Amer recognized his brother among the released Caesar photographs after an acquaintance told him a family member was among them:

I was too sad at first, I did not want to look at the photographs. I told myself I want nothing to do with that. Then someone said he recognized someone from the Hadla family. They sent me an SMS [with] a picture. It was true, he was here. It was him, one hundred percent.

Human Rights Watch also spoke with Khalid’s other brother Ma’moun, who confirmed that he recognized Khalid in the photograph. The white card in the picture identified by Khalid’s family was market with the letter “ج”, indicating that the detainee was under the custody of the Air Force Intelligence branch. The photo was in a folder dated June 4, 2013, about five months after Khalid’s arrest. Khalid was 39 years old when he was arrested.

Human Rights Watch showed five photographs that are reportedly of Khaled after his death to forensic experts at Physicians for Human Rights. PHR’s team of forensic pathologists noted that the photographs showed an adult man who appeared to be in his 40s, and that the photographs showed evidence of severe blunt force trauma, in particular to his left arm. The expert report noted that the victim had been hung by both wrists.

Osama Hussein Salim

Osama Hussein Salim, a Palestinian resident in Syria, was from Yarmouk Camp on the edge of Damascus. According to his brother Firas, he was married and had two young children. He worked as an accountant at Damascus University. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a Palestinian armed group allied with the Syrian government, arrested him around 10 a.m. on February 24, 2013 from a checkpoint at the entrance to Yarmouk, while he was trying to enter the camp. A friend of the family saw Osama’s arrest and informed them what had happened.

The family heard through Palestinian contacts closely allied with the Syrian government that Osama had been transferred to the Branch 235 of Military Intelligence, known as Palestine Branch. The contacts asked them to pay 50,000 SYP (US$708) to secure his release. Though the family gathered the money to pay, the contacts kept putting off the meeting, and eventually told the family they could not help Hussein. Firas told Human Rights Watch:

I spent seven months asking about him. I was an employee at the Damascus University, I asked the doctors of the university. You know some of them are human, they still have a heart, and they did not take sides. I asked them, because they are well connected. I kept asking about him, but all I got were lies.

According to Firas, Osama was not an activist or involved in anti-government activity. “He had nothing to do with anything,” Firas told Human Rights Watch. He added that Firas had a liver disease before his arrest.

About seven months after Osama’s arrest, security officers stopped Firas at the gate of his university. “If you keep asking about your brothers, we will cut out your tongue,” they told him. That day, Firas fled Syria.

Though the family continued to seek news of Osama, they heard nothing, including from former detainees, until the Caesar photographs were published online. In the photographs taken from the Caesar files, Osama’s body has the words “Air Force Administrative Branch” written in marker on his abdomen. The photograph came from a folder dated February 2013, the same month as his arrest. The family recognized Osama by two tattoos on his left arm as well as his pants and top, in addition to his appearance.

Human Rights Watch shared four photographs of Osama’s body with Physicians for Human Rights. A team of forensic pathologists observed facial contusion as well as scratches and abrading on the face in the photographs, and evidence of “severe” blunt force trauma.

Ayham Ghazzoul

Ayham Ghazzoul was a student at Damascus University pursuing a masters’ degree in dentistry and a human rights activist who worked with the Syria Center for Media and Freedom of Expression in Syria, as well as the Syrian Violations Documenting Center.

He was 25 years old when members of the National Students’ Committee, a pro-government student union, detained him at Damascus University on November 5, 2012 and turned him over to Military Intelligence. Security forces had previously arrested him on February 16, 2012, and held him until a military court ordered his release in May.

M., another student from Damascus University who was arrested on the same day, said that security officers took him to a room in the medical college of Damascus University. Ayham was already there. The officers tortured the two students for approximately four hours, beating them with their hands, shocking them with electric batons, whipping them with cables and hoses. They were later transferred to the 215 Branch (Military Intelligence) together, and detained in the same cell.

On the fourth day of their detention, November 9, 2012, M. said:

Ayham came to me and said I am so tired I want just to sleep, I told him come and put your head on my leg. After about 45 minutes the security guards came to wash the corridor where we were sitting, then I tried to wake up Ayham but he didn’t respond. I shouted to a doctor from Aleppo - he was [also] a prisoner- he came and put his hand on Ayham’s neck and his hand and said he had died…30 minutes ago, Ayham’s body was very cold when I touched it. Then [the guards] brought a blanket and put Ayham inside it … and put a number on his head…and took him.

Ayham’s family did not learn of his death until January 20, 2013, more than two months later, when M. was released and described to them Ayham’s death in the 215 Branch. In 2014, they began searching for official confirmation of Ayham’s death. Maryam, his mother, visited both the 215 and the 248 (Military Intelligence) security branches in Damascus, but the security officers did not initially provide her with any information. On May 10, 2014, the military police in Qaboun referred her to the Tishreen Military Hospital, which provided her with a death certificate that stated heart failure as the cause of death.[62] Maryam requested the return of Ayham’s personal belongings (his wallet, keys, and identification) both from the hospital authorities and by lodging a formal request with the military prosecution office.[63] However, his belongings were never returned to her.[64]

Human Rights Watch showed three Caesar photographs identified as being of Ayham’s body to Physicans for Human Rights’ team of forensic pathologists. Based on these photographs, they were not able to identify the potential cause of his death or identify major injuries upon his body.

Ahmad al-Musalmani, Child

Ahmad al-Musalmani was a 14-year old boy from Namr, Daraa. Before the uprising in Syria began, he was in the seventh grade. After Ahmad’s older brother Shadi was shot and killed on March 23, 2011 during an early protest in Daraa, Ahmad’s family sent him to Lebanon for his safety. Ahmad was thirteen years old when he left Syria for Lebanon.

Ahmad’s mother died of natural causes in Syria while he was apart from the family in Lebanon. On August 2, 2012, when he was fourteen, he returned to Syria to attend his mother’s funeral. He was traveling in a minibus with five other people. One of them later located Ahmad’s family and described his arrest to them. Family members told HRW that according to Ahmad’s fellow passenger, officers from the Air Force Intelligence stopped the car at al-Kiswa bridge checkpoint, on the road between Damascus and Daraa, and an officer asked Ahmad, “Why are you crying?” Ahmad answered, “I am crying because my mother died.”

The officer took the passengers’ phones and started to search them, and he found an anti-Assad song on Ahmad’s phone. He began insulting Ahmad, calling him “you animal,” and other swear words. Then he dragged Ahmad into a small room at the checkpoint, his fellow passenger told the family the day after the incident. The rest of the passengers continued on without him.

Ahmad’s uncle, Dahi al-Musalmani, served as a judge for 20 years in Syria before he fled the country in March 2013. Dahi told Human Rights Watch that he went to see several government officials after Ahmad’s disappearance, including Minister of Social Reconciliation Ali Haydar, to obtain news about Ahmad’s case. He called the 248 Security Branch, controlled by the Military Intelligence agency, to inquire if Ahmad was being held there, after a tip from one of these contacts, but they told him Ahmad was not among the detainees.

In December 2012, five months after Ahmad’s arrest and still without any news about him, a man with strong government contacts whom Dahi declined to identify came to Dahi’s office and told him that if he paid 600,000 Syrian pounds (approximately US$8,451 at that time), Ahmad would be released. The man told him the money was for a pro-Assad member of parliament. Dahi paid the man and accompanied him to drop off the money. After ten days, he said, he received a call from the man.

“Ahmad is alive,” the man told me. “He is detained in the Air Force Intelligence branch in Zablatani.” I told him, “I want Ahmad to be released.” He answered, “You wanted to know his whereabouts, now you know. If you want more you will have to pay two million Syrian pounds. I responded, “I do not have this kind of money, I would have to be a thief or very rich. “

Dahi sold some land, and raised one million pounds (approximately US$ 14,085 at that time), but the man told him it was not enough. “I started to beg him,” he said. “I am a judge and I became a beggar. I am a judge and I will kiss his feet so that he accepts.” He accompanied the man and waited in the car while he delivered the money. Dahi said he saw the MP, accept the bag of money. The man returned and told Dahi that Ahmed would be released in ten days. But Ahmed did not come home.

Three months later, Dahi received a call from the Air Force Intelligence branch in Zablatani requiring him to appear at the branch. “My nephews told me not to go. [They said] ‘they will arrest you and kill you,’” Dahi told Human Rights Watch. He and his nephews left for Jordan the next day. On March 16, the day they left, family members who remained behind informed him, his house was raided.

The family continued to search for Ahmad from Jordan, and to appeal in the media for his release.

When the photographs were released, Dahi searched for Ahmad among them.

I went directly to the folder of the Air Force Intelligence, and I found him. [he breaks down while talking] It was a shock. Oh, it was the shock of my life to see him here. I looked for him, 950 days I looked for him. I counted each day. When his mother was dying, she told me: ‘I leave him under your protection.’ What protection could I give?

Five photographs of Ahmad appeared among the Caesar photographs. The photographs appeared in a folder dated August 2012—the month of his arrest. Human Rights Watch shared these five photographs with Physicians for Human Rights, whose forensic pathologists observed that they depicted a boy in his teenage years with several marks of blunt force trauma.

Rehab al-Allawi

Rehab al-Allawi, a Damascus resident originally from Deir al-Zor, was an engineering student at Damascus University before the uprising in Syria. Hers was the only published photograph of a woman, among the Caesar photographs dealing with dead detainees.

Rehab was about 25 years old when the Raids Brigade, a special raids unit of the military police, arrested her on January 17, 2013. The unit came to the family home in Damascus around 10 p.m. According to Rehab’s brother Hamza, an officer told Rehab’s mother that the matter would be closed within a few hours.

Rehab worked in one of Damascus’s local coordination committees—loose networks of activists—and she assisted internally displaced persons who had fled Homs, her brother Hamza told Human Rights Watch. After her arrest, the family sought information through personal contacts within the Syrian government. They paid over US$18,000 to various officials in the Syrian military and security services to gain information about Rehab, and to try and secure her release but received no information.

After a few months, a Syrian brigadier-general told the family Rehab had died of a stroke, her brother reported. Rehab’s other brother Bassam asked to see her grave, and in March 2013, an officer accompanied him to al-Najha cemetery, on the outskirts of Damascus. Bassam showed the guards a picture of Rehab and asked if they had seen her body. The guards told him, “Yes they brought three girls at 11 p.m. ten days ago.” Hamza, Rehab’s other brother, asked Bassam to have her exhumed, but he was not able to do so. When he asked, the office replied, “There is nothing more we can do.” The family never received a death certificate. They held a memorial service for Rehab in Jordan soon after, and another in Saudi Arabia, where the two brothers live, in June 2013.

The same month as Rehab’s second memorial, an acquaintance who knew Syria’s Justice Minister called the family and told them Rehab was still alive. “We told him, Bassam saw her grave. He told us, ‘She is in the Military Security Branch, I saw her name on the register. If she was dead, she would not be on it.’”

Several months later, in October 2013, a military security officer reached out to the family and requested $90,000 to secure Rehab’s release: $50,000 as payment for his services, and $40,000 to secure her safe exit from Syria to Turkey. Bassam met and paid an intermediary in Istanbul. After the money was transferred, the officer told Rehab’s family that she had left Syria for Lebanon.

“We believed it, we searched all over Lebanon, every tent. For eight months we hoped we would find her,” Hamza told Human Rights Watch.

A former detainee, Hanadi, told Human Rights Watch that she was detained with Rehab for over three weeks in the 215 Branch (Military Intelligence). Rehab arrived in late January or early February 2013, according to Hanadi and information other former detainees provided Rehab’s family. Hanadi said:

We spent 24 days together in the cell, next to each other, she talked to me about her parents. She wanted to see her parents. She would always speak about her brothers and sisters, she was scared for her family.

Hanadi was transferred to Adra Prison after three and a half weeks. She never saw Rehab again. About a month later, a new female detainee arrived to Adra from Branch 215. Hanadi said she asked the new detainee about Rehab. The detainee said that one night at about 11 p.m. a month and a half after Hanadi was transferred the guard came and told Rehab: “Pack your stuff, you are going home.”

In March2015, after the Caesar photographs were published online, a cousin called the family and asked if Rehab’s photo might be among those released. “She looks just like Rehab,” the cousin said.

Though the family recognized Rehab, they asked former detainees who had seen Rehab in prison to confirm, as her appearance had changed greatly during her detention.

Hanadi told Human Rights Watch:

One day her brother called me and asked me if it was Rehab in the photographs that were published. She gained a lot of weight in detention… because we could not move, and from eating potatoes, rice, and bulghur. I recognized the pyjamas she was wearing, and her face. Even the shape of her toes was the same. When she arrived she was not sick, her face was not yellow, and she was very thin.

In the photographs that emerged of her body, 215 Branch is written on her forehead. Three photographs that appear to be Rehab were saved in a folder dated June 4, 2013. Human Rights Watch shared these photographs with Physicians for Human Rights. Forensic pathologists observed that the photographs depicted a woman in her 20s with an IV line apparent in her left arm, indicating medical intervention. They found no visible evidence of injuries or blunt force trauma.

Oqba al-Mashaan

Oqba al-Mashaan was 32 years old when he was arrested. He lived in the town of Mou Hassan, in Deir al-Zor governorate, where he worked as a government employee at the local agricultural department office. He was married with two daughters: Alia, who is now four, and Rehab, who is now three.

Oqba came from a large family, with five brothers and one sister. The family had already faced tragedy when government forces shot and killed his younger brother Zuheir during an anti-government protest in 2011.

Pro-government armed men arrested Oqba on March 28, 2012 as he was on his way home and turned him over to the local Air Force Intelligence branch. Several onlookers saw the arrest and informed the family what had happened.

When his oldest brother, Qotaiba, went looking for Oqba, he was also arrested, he told Human Rights Watch. Qotaiba spent 30 days detained in the Branch 291, run by Military Intelligence in Damascus.

In October 2012, two of Qotaiba’s brothers were killed. One was killed by pro-government sniper and one in an indiscriminate attack, his parents told Human Rights Watch. The youngest of the family, Bashar, was killed in 2014 during a battle with the Islamic State, while he was trying to assist the wounded, they said. Qotaiba had been released, but Oqba was still missing. His father, Ali al-Mashaan, told