A member of the Syrian Coalition said that the Assad regime has committed major war crimes against humanity since it seized power and has an “archive of evil” against Syrian civilians. He was commenting on news about the collection of one million pages of documents containing compelling evidence on the war crimes the Assad regime is committing against the Syrian people.
Member of the Coalition’s political committee Okab Yahya said that these documents have shed yet further light on the immense suffering the Syrian people are going through at the hands of the Assad regime. These documents “unequivocally damn the murderous Assad regime and its head who oversees all these crimes as many of the documents bear his signature,” Yahya added. He pointed out that Bashar al-Assad is directly responsible for all these crimes.
The Times newspaper on Sunday revealed the collection of an archive containing one million pages of documents showing how orders for torture and murder of opponents come straight from Assad himself. The newspaper noted that most of the documents bear the embossed hawk of the Assad regime, and some carry the signature of Bashar al-Assad himself.
The newspaper said that the documents are stored in stacks of 265 cardboard boxes in a locked vault that is monitored by security cameras in a secret location in a European city. Each page was scanned to create a digital archive, assigned a barcode and a number, and stored in the boxes.
Christina Lamb, the Times chief foreign correspondent, said that the secret project to gather evidence on Assad’s war crimes is the brainchild of Bill Wiley, a Canadian ex-soldier and war crimes investigator, who was frustrated working in international criminal courts that he concluded were too slow and expensive.
Wiley said what he has gathered proves “hundreds of times over that Assad is absolutely in control of everything that happens in the regime and is responsible for far more killing than Isis.”
The documents, which contain “overwhelming evidence” against Assad, have been collected and smuggled out by Syrians inside the country. Some have paid with their lives and two remain in regime custody, the Times added.
The documents are corroborated by about 55,000 photographs, smuggled out of Syria by a military police officer known by the pseudonym Caesar. He and his team photographed corpses of detainees which were delivered to military hospitals from security services. Each corpse had a unique four-digit number scrawled on tape or the forehead with a thick marker. Many had been beaten, mutilated, burnt, shot — and in some cases even melted.
Yahya pointed out that the Coalitions’ legal committee has already submitted to the International Criminal Court documents containing evidence about the crimes and terror of the regime and its head Assad. He pointed out that Syrian organizations also provided documents and testimonies about the regime’s deliberate crimes against civilians demanding freedom.
Yahya expressed his hope that these documents will show up in the International Criminal Court (ICC). He urged ICC investigators and judges to assume their role and take these and other documents into consideration to complete the process of bringing criminals to justice. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
