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תקיפה תקיפות צבא אסד נגד ה מורדים דומא דמשק סוריה

France launches war crimes inquiry into Assad regime

Probe into alleged war crimes to be based on 55,000 photos of a former Syrian army photographer who defected in 2013, and display the regime's 'unbearably cruel' conduct.

French authorities have recently launched a criminal probe of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime for alleged war crimes committed between 2011 and 2013.

 

 

"Faced with these crimes that offend the human conscience, with this bureaucratic horror, with this denial of humanity's values, it is our responsibility to act against the impunity of these assassins," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement sent to AFP.

 

Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary war crimes inquiry on September 15, a source told AFP. A diplomatic source confirmed the launch of the probe.

 

Destruction wrought by Assad regime's bombing
Destruction wrought by Assad regime's bombing

 

The investigation is focusing on evidence provided by a former Syrian army photographer known by the codename "Caesar," who defected and fled the country in 2013, bringing with him some 55,000 graphic photographs of scenes from the brutal conflict.

 

"The César report - thousands of unbearable photos, authenticated by many experts, that show corpses tortured and starved to death in the prisons of the regime - demonstrates the systematic cruelty of Bashar Assad's regime," said Fabius, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

 

Fabius called on the UN and notably the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria "to continue with enhanced determination" its investigations.

 

The Foreign Ministry reported the incident to the Prosecutor of Paris. Investigators from the Central Office of the fight against crimes against humanity, genocide and war crime were tasked with conducting the investigations.

 

At a press conference in Paris in March 2014, several photos of unbearable cruelty, from a memory card carried by "Caesar" were projected at the Arab World Institute. Written in English with blood-colored letters and entitled "Assad's secret killings", the photo essay was intended for international bodies including the UN, to build up a file of the regime's responsibility for "mass torture."

 

The photos showed eyes gouged out, people with lesions on their backs or stomachs, emaciated bodies and also a photo showing hundreds of corpses lying in a hangar in the middle of plastic bags to be used to bury them.

 

Damascus had then described the report as "political".

 

The announcement comes as the four-year war in Syria takes center-stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have clashed over how to bring an end to the crisis.

 

French President Francois Hollande has joined Obama in insisting Assad cannot play a role in the country's future, against opposition from Damascus's allies Russia and Iran.

 

"Russia and Iran say they want to be part of a solution," Hollande said. "So we must work with these countries to explain to them that the route to a solution does not go through Bashar al-Assad."

 


פרסום ראשון: 09.30.15, 09:52
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