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Ghastly as the pictures are of the Syrian regime’s tortured dead, they aren’t the worst of it.

In the lawyerly report released this week on the eve of peace talks opening in Geneva, the most damning information links an unknown number of unnamed Syrian physicians and judges to the cover-up of large-scale killings the authors describe as “systematic, ordered and directed from above.”

The investigative team says there is “clear evidence” that would support findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the government of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

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In Switzerland, the U.S. and the Syrian opposition opened the conference by saying the Syrian leader lost his legitimacy when he crushed a once-peaceful protest movement.

In a strong riposte, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moallem countered that terrorists and foreign meddling had ripped his country apart. He refused to give up the podium despite requests from the UN chief.

“You live in New York. I live in Syria,” he angrily told UN chief Ban Ki-moon. “I have the right to give the Syrian version here in this forum. After three years of suffering, this is my right.”

Less than three hours into the peace talks in the Swiss city of Montreux, the two sides seemed impossibly far apart.

“We really need to deal with reality,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. “There is no way – no way possible in the imagination – that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern. One man and those who have supported him can no longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage.”