April 25, 2020
incomplete
2. The IIT itself interviewed 20 persons of interest, including alleged victims, during this
phase of its work. Since the incidents under investigation took place in the same
geographical area and within seven days of each other, most of the persons of interest
were able to provide information for more than one incident.
(including the one that was clearly invented retroactively - not just unverified civilian witnesses, militant ones, possible militants speaking as White Helmets (day job), but also to … the White Helmets as a group, a bunch of Syrian opposition groups who collate the same kind of allegations, and various European agencies and NGOs that collate those collations and are taken as lending credence in the process (not that it was needed...)
These interviews were considered in conjunction with statements previously provided to the FFM and other entities. In relation to other entities that were willing to provide information, or
provide leads for the investigation, the general approach of the IIT has been to request
access to information that the IIT considered could be obtained from those entities,
and to assess it together with the rest of the information already at the IIT’s disposal.
In its investigation, the IIT reached out, among others, to the following entities:124
list:
1 The Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS);
2 Chemical Violations Documentation Center of Syria (CVDCS);
3 Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA);
4 Europol Analysis Project on Core International Crimes (AP CIC);
5 European Union Satellite Centre;
6 Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) – Peace and Security;
7 Human Rights Watch;
8 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic;
9 Open Society Justice Initiative;
10 Peace SOS;
11 Syria Civil Defence (SCD);
12 Syria Justice and Accountability Centre;
13 Syrian Archive;
14 Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR);
15 Syrian NGO Alliance,
16 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - relevant if the meteorological data was manipulated
Not: SOHR, any Syrian non-opposition groups like ... ones that have existed, still might, but I'd have to check.
1 The Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS);
- ?
2 Chemical Violations Documentation Center of Syria (CVDCS);
- interesting history, etc.
-- ...
3 Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA);
- Assad Files: hoax
-- https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/11/revolution-unraveled-assad-files-now-an-achilles-heel-for-war-crimes-narrative/
- http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/04/regarding-those-assad-files.html
- star witness who helped fill in the gaps
-- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/03/some-different-opinions-on-retun-of.html
4 Europol Analysis Project on Core International Crimes (AP CIC);
- sounds sure to be unbiassed (sarcasm)
5 European Union Satellite Centre;
- relevant if the meteorological data was manipulated
6 Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) – Peace and Security;
- compiled the most inflated, dishonest collation of CW allegations against Syria to date
-- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-change-of-thinking-on-douma-chemical.html
7 Human Rights Watch;
- identified KhAB-250 by looking at it inside out, other incompetence
-- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-opcw-bellingcat-collaboration.html
8 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic;
- uniquely Syrian CW weapon, etc. Bellingcat collaboration?
-- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-opcw-bellingcat-collaboration.html
- e.g. reliance on bogus OPCW findings like 'no wind theory' and location fudging to make their spread seem to work
-- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/07/idlib-chemical-massacre-4-4-17-wind.html
9 Open Society Justice Initiative;
- no research of my own - what can a Soros-run compiler of allegations really add?
10 Peace SOS;
- sounds cuddly - don't know them
11 Syria Civil Defence (SCD);
- would surely be in on any staged scenario, which they considered, and found against, based on things and stories "SCD" handed them
12 Syria Justice and Accountability Centre;
- https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-clearer-view-on-assad-files.html
13 Syrian Archive;
- just video archiving? some commentary attached, maybe more?
14 Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR);
- long record, no overview of my own, several good articles by others
-- ...
15 Syrian NGO Alliance,
- ?
16 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - relevant if the meteorological data was manipulated
The Site that Asks: Is the "dictator" justifying intervention by killing innocents? Or is someone else doing it for him? (previously The Libyan Civil War: Critical Views)
Showing posts with label CIJA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIJA. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Saturday, August 3, 2019
A Clearer View on the "Assad Files"
August 3. 2019
(rough, incomplete)
The following article serves as a review of the report "Walls Have Ears: An Analysis of Classified Syrian Security Sector Documents," published April/May 2019 in Washington, DC. by Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), dedicated to "a Syria defined by justice, respect for human rights, and rule of law." Direct link: https://syriaaccountability.org/library/walls-have-ears/
As explained, the report is based on analysis of some 5,003 pages of documents "obtained from intelligence agency offices that were abandoned by the government during the Syrian war." Actually just 3,470 of those wound up relevant enough to consider, and a smaller portion of those are said to expose "serious human rights violations."
These include a vast majority from the "Assad Files" as I've covered them, from a separate but likeminded Committee for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) with a touted 800,000 pages worth. The Globe and Mail (Canada) recently spoke with Canadian Bill Wiley, CIJA's founder, who said the files ("more than 800,000 pages" worth) present “the best evidence against a regime since Nuremberg,” and is “much, much better” than what was presented in court against Slobodan Milosevic. Huh. I leave it to the reader to decide what that means.
Other documents are from the SJAC's own smaller collection of about 5,000 pages. From what's cited and not, the SJAC's files seem to be more of the same (legitimate documents but lacking in criminal orders). As such, they should be included in, and add a sliver to the "Assad Files," which is not exclusively the domain of CIJA.
With a total of 3,470 pages examined for this report, this is the largest body of such documents specifically looked at and assessed in total, and our best view yet into how the "Assad Files" in general really look. So far it's been down to noting the weakness of their chosen best examples. Here, we get a sort of overview of a very large set - good and bad examples - chosen supposedly at random.
In that light, I'll re-explain their stated selection process (but further down - see "sample selection and relevance") to show why this sampling matters and helps clarify the significance of patterns illustrated here. First the patterns - what kinds of alleged regime crimes wound up having evidence located, and which did not.
Overview
Mass irrelevance
As the file selection process shows (see below) of all "Assad Files" - a vast majority probably over 96% - are completely irrelevant. Of the more relevant 3-4%, this sampling suggests a majority also have no bearing on relevant subjects (only 848 "high priority" pages vs. 2,622 not so high). And even with those ... the examples shown thus far suggest nothing terribly incriminating was found, and that impression runs right through everything the SJAC adds here.
The juicy core: admitted violations
Of the selected pages (3,470) only about 6% of them (214 pages) "included a confession to a possible violation" - a criminal order given in a top-secret file is the main thing the CIJA and others have been suggesting they have lots of. Some are orders for acts most readers would disprove of, but this 214 pages with "confessions" also include an unclear percentage with "indirect admissions, such as instructions to cease a certain activity that is a clear violation" So orders to stop an activity - ordered in the first place or not - count as "admissions." "SJAC found no evidence to suggest that these directives (to cease violations) were followed," perhaps allowing violations to continue. But they also admit by omission they found no orders to start any serious abuses.
Even with "violations" seeming relatively mundane, or vague and poorly-explained (see below), and with "admissions" to them defined so broadly, just 214 out of some 3,500 pages fit the bill. This suggests close to 6% of all equally "relevant" documents across the "Assad Files" will include such a broadly-defined "admission" - probably just as grossly padded as this, and probably including zero real support to the opposition's outlandish mythology.
Seven shared pages
11 pages from the sample set were deemed important enough by SJAC to share in their original form and translated to English (with minor redactions). But four of these are about "repression of the Kurds" and date from 2010, before the terrorist insurgency and current allegations began. (such dated files are included, ostensibly, because measures in this span MIGHT feed into relevant resentments in 2011. But it wasn't an uprising of repressed Kurds, was it?) Just seven shared pages concern all other alleged crimes from 2011 and forward, combined! This select seven has a lot riding on it - they had better be good. But here are all of them, briefly summarized:
- orders to “do the necessary” regarding a certain journalist (presumably arrest her, if she re-entered Syria)
- orders from 2014 to destroy vehicles left at checkpoints and suspected of being rigged with explosives, but as SJAC complains ... without a reminder to avoid civilian casualties (why is a reminder needed?), and without urging troops to search the vehicles first, which ... SJAC thinks is the best way to be sure it's rigged to blow up?
- An admission of at least three children (or "juveniles under age 18" as given) were arrested in one place (unclear) during 2013-14. Aged 14-16 at the time, depending, all three were accused of terrorism-militant activities, including joining armed groups as child soldiers (they recruit usually from age 13 and up), training to shoot, and even shooting in militant attacks. Also, they were arrested, and that's a "violation" by the government?
- In December, 2011, orders stop having civilians in Homs help run security checkpoints and openly identify targets for arrest. The practice was raising sectarian tensions, which had led to kidnapping and killings by civilians on both sides (app. meaning Sunni and Alawite), and must be stopped. See ACLOS posting.
- Orders to use seized motorcycles for new counter-terror group (according to SJAC, this practice was later halted, or "passively admitted," besides here being seen ordered.)
- A warning of likely chemical weapons use by terrorist, using materials seized from Libya's stocks, in order to frame the government (as it happens, about 2 weeks before the first such allegations I know of, in February, 2012) See ACLOS posting.
- An official felt there was a conspiracy of lies against the Syrian government, and wanted thoughts on it.
And remember these seven are probably among the best examples they could find, out of ~3,500 potentially relevant pages, to illustrate those "serious human rights violations" the SJAC want us to believe in.
Torture
The report admits "None of the pages in the sample set explicitly admitted to the use of torture, despite widespread and consistent accusations..." That's zero out of 3,470. But the SJAC prefers the accusations, of course, and suggest as probable that "despite the government’s detailed records, certain topics were intentionally omitted or concealed in written communications." This would be convenient - everything you want to find but can't must have been ordered in more secret files since burned, or issued verbally, or in code, with a system of winks and nods, or perhaps by pheromones as with ants. But never could they consider that such thing simply were never ordered by the Syrian government. SJAC also notes, as if in desperation: "At least one page, however, included a handwritten note from a detained individual who confessed to crimes and swore that he was not beaten or tortured during his arrest, raising suspicions that he may have indeed been tortured or mistreated in detention." So they have some pretty self-raising suspicions, that enjoy only inverse support from the documents.
Mass killing of prisoners
Among 3,470 pages, enough mention detainees that a "vast majority" of them don't mention a death, let alone a murder, ordered or otherwise. It seems reference to just one death in custody was found, and they have to doubt its claims that he died from an infection, stemming from an injury sustained during his arrest. As they put it, the files have the patient treated in a hospital and declared stable, only to die anyway, apparently just before he was to be transferred to a Mukhabarat prison (unclear timeline). To the SJAC, "The YouTube video" of the victim's body, and not any located document, "indicates that he may have experienced torture and other mistreatment in custody," This is based on noted "bruising" that might actually be infection-related, for example.
This one case alone gave enough material to "raise questions" to this effect, to people over-eager to see them raised. One death with no clear admission or order involved actually raises the question "where the hell are the orders behind the alleged mass of prisoner killings?" Was this too "omitted or concealed"? Of course they would have to find this likely enough it's probably true...
The "Caesar Photos" indeed prove something quite terrible and very large. My analysis of the timeline of CP victims suggests these abused bodies were produced at an alarming rate - averaging around 1,000 per month from late 2012 through August, 2013 - all with no reflection in official orders? The given story of systematic killing in regime prisons has long coat-tails, provided by those very many photographs as "proof," and which these Assad Files tend to ride on. They focus on the same class of allegations, with CIJA trying to craft a paperwork version of that stronger story; the two are repeatedly used together in moving videos by UK "news" outlets, leaning against each other as is convenient. But closer inspection reveals how they probably do not show the same thing, as sold. The CIJA and SJAC have so far failed to find any remotely clear link between that criminality and the top-secret communications that should reflect it somewhere - if that mass extermination of prisoners was ever the work of the government. There was a specific effort - or two - that seems like well-researched tries at a timeline match-up with two specific CP victims, both pinned on branch 227 in a short time span. But I was able to almost prove that both of these best tries were phony. That's the best it gets, so no line-up; these numbers and documents refer to different people in different prison systems! As it stands, the "Assad Files" line-up with a growing body of evidence suggesting the thousands of murdered men and boys in those "Caesar Photos" were killed by others (probably Jaish Al-Islam) on the "moderate Islamist" opposition side (Al-Qaeda-Al-Nusra and the rest, aside from ISIS), whom the CIJA admits it works with, and does not investigate at all.
Targeting journalists and coded orders
At least one file (November 18, 2011) speaks to targeting of journalists and well enough to include in full. A foreign female journalist (name redacted) was considered criminal for her pro-militant reporting and agitation, and had been barred from Syria. There are unexplained orders to "do the necessary" - a standard phrase, here probably meaning keep monitoring her two known phone numbers, and arrest her if she was caught back in Syria. That's not terrible at all, unless one imagines hidden meanings. And it seems nothing more criminal along these lines came up in the sample set.
SJAC imagines hidden meaning here, proposing that the standard phrase "do the necessary" (or “take the necessary measures” or similar) - as used with the case above - can be a code ordering killing or other criminal activity. Do cue the mood music. "The difficulty" they opted to have "was in understanding whether the phrase was a relevant indicator of a potential violation or a simple catch-all used in even mundane circumstances." The doubt comes not from anything in the files, but from military and intelligence "defectors" lodging some unverified and propagandistic claims.
- one defector said that a similar - but different - phrase meant to arrest or kill journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed, under murky circumstances, allegedly on government orders, but seemingly with no supports found in the Assad Files - just from the allegations of this defector.
- some 63 defectors all told HRW in 2011 that another similar phrase - "By all means necessary!" - meant to shoot and kill peaceful protesters ("about half" said killing was explicitly ordered, even with death quotas given, the rest all felt it was hinted but not said outright. All agreed the orders were issued verbally, not on paper, and in fact "Ameen" said "On paper, it said “Stop the protesters,” but verbally he explicitly said, “Kill.”")
The best example SJAC found in their search suggested "do the necessary" meant to paint over some graffiti (reported as done) and then do "the necessary" with the law-breakers if they were ever found. That's supposed to sound ominous, but it probably isn't. With the above case around the journalist (by the way, not Marie Colvin), it probably means monitor and arrest a person, if warranted.
…
Admission to the Commission of Crimes
This is the key thing you should find lots of here, in top-secret orders for said crimes, reports of carrying them out, etc. SJAC identified 214 pages that included a confession to a possible violation. That's ~ 6% of the sample set. Of these 214 pages, a majority are "implicated human rights abuses" (violating right to freedom of assembly, due process rights, etc.) while "a much smaller number of pages implicated violations of international humanitarian law," more specifically criminal activities. But generally, the gravity of offense and degree of implication are left unclear.
"The largest percentage" of those related to "protests, including surveillance of suspected government dissidents, wanted lists and arrest campaigns, and government security forces’ activities during protests" (or maybe during those armed "events" they also refer to - dealing with immediate militant problems, not issuing orders for massacres, prison torture and other acts of random villainy.
"The types of alleged violations which the Syrian government directly admitted to in the documents" - which should include the most severe violations possibly located - are given as:
Violation of Freedom of Expression and Assembly.
Violation of Due Process Rights.
Arbitrary Detention and Death of Children.
Violations of the Principle of Distinction.
Manipulation of Humanitarian Aid.
They found nothing more serious, like systematic genocide, or it would be noted. Let's consider a couple of these.
Conflation of Unarmed Civilians, Armed Groups, and Terrorists.
…
I can vouch for some abiguity in the wording. As we've seen, the CIJA deliberately exaggerates any conflation and then ignores the militant part, to falsely claim a government strategy in 2011 of rounding up peaceful protest organizers. (it was in fact specified all wanted targets were wanted for violent crimes including mudering and "terrorizing" citizens, and some of the militants were also organizing some kind of armed "demonstrations." A rare glimpse of the original document proves it contains nothing criminal, but it was sold based on distorted paraphrasing as the "linchpin" of the CIJA's case against government officials. Let's keep calling it their linchpin. It probably will tie in nicely with the rest, with reasonable actions distorted to sound criminal... nothing in the SJAC report or previously does much to counter that impression.
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/11/revolution-unraveled-assad-files-now-an-achilles-heel-for-war-crimes-narrative/
Is this what they meant? If so, there's my guess; "demonstraions" has a different meaning than usual. Two different documents clarify these events had someone "arming" them, and were organized by armed militants, not peaceful activists. The word they used for "demonstrations" (as CIJA had translated it in at least one important case from 2011) is التظاهرات (altazaharat). This Google-translates vaguely to "events" and is not the usual word for "demonstrations" ( المظاهرات - almazaharat, very similar), nor the usual word for events ( الأحداث - al'ahdath - not similar at all). If spelling = meaning (which it doesn't), this word suggests an unusual "event" that looks like a protest but isn't. That might be about its meaning, as used.
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2018/09/painting-vs-reality-in-syria-crisis.html
It might be pretentious for this non-Arabic speaker to challenge the SJAC reading, but I challenge it (after consulting a couple native speakers). The word used apparently means a hard-to-classify "event" that involve both protest and shooting, and used in line with thinking shaped by years of emergency law, by which anti-government, Islamist, or sectarian demonstrations like these were roughly as illegal as the armed violence that tends to come with them. People involved in these "events" do, as translated, "demonstrate" and are called "demonstrators" (usual words). But they're clearly armed, as it says, and in other contexts with no protests at the moment, it's probably the same people they refer to as "armed gangs."
The flip-side of this reading is there would be no distinct word for non-violent demonstrator. Unless, perhaps, they did exactly what I just did: specify this one was peaceful. For all we know they do this, and the SJAC just didn't mention it, as they claim deliberate conflation, presumably to "justify" that plan to shoot down harmless protesters (for which there's still no clear evidence whatsoever in the "Assad Files.")
Manipulation of Humanitarian Aid"
From the given details, it sounds like questionable controls were placed on aid deliveries, perhaps with political conditions attached (limiting the number of aid trucks allowed in, etc.) This isn't the best-sounding practice, but let's pause to consider what it also doesn't sound like. There's nothing mentioned about imposing a total starvation blockade anywhere, when it's been alleged just about everywhere, and generally believed. The CIJA has never mentioned finding such a thing either. "Omitted or concealed"?
Even if there were orders somewhere, the mechanism of its implementation remains mysterious. The visual record is clear that militants and allies eat as well as they like (see Yaser al-Doumani's weight-gain during the siege of E Ghouta). Accounts and images suggest most people suffer shortages (due mostly to hoarding and price-gouging by militants and allies) with real health effects, but nearly all of them keep finding enough to eat they stay alive, at least. And then we've been shown what must be a select few people get entirely cut off from food, probably water and all care (or sometimes fall ill and aren't treated), but as soon as they finally pass away, concerned people are able to get that skin-and-bones corpse on video, shown off as to prove Assad's starvation blockade. How "Assad" got the people in these rebel-held areas to stop sharing food with each other was never explained, and no one pressed for an explanation. Also, as CIJA and SJAC confirm by omission, no orders related to such a (human decency embargo?) have been located. The evil behind this must have another source. (Is there another power with a hand in Syria known to use total starvation blockades for real? Consider their proxies.) (Below: Yaser al-Doumani vs. a contrast in the alleged regime starving of Yarmouk Palestinian camp.
"Arbitrary Detention and Death of Children"
The report notes "One page was a telegram request for a list of children being held at security offices, indicating that the security apparatus was aware of such practices." As noted above, one shared page gives a reply: three teenage boys (all aged around 15) are listed as taken in for membership in armed militant groups and related activities (training to shoot, joining in attacks, filming attacks, suspicious surveillance of pro-government civilians, etc.) Militants recruit children, the government arrests them as needed, and regime officials were aware of this! They almost surely approved of it! I would too! (below: cropped from SJAC's page translation)
SJAC reports two further documents out of 3,470 referred to three other juveniles arrested for things that aren't even crimes in most countries (but are in Syria, and it's known). One refers to a boy arrested "for participation in protests" of a disallowed sort, and the other is about two kids taken in "for supposedly saying “shame” when passing a photo of Assad." Ages weren't given. We may not approve of these cases, but is it fit for a trial at the Hague?
"Another page listed names of individuals who were killed in clashes at a protest in Deir Ezzor, which included minors." Who killed who and all other circumstances are left totally unclear. Maybe those killed were more opposition child soldiers killed in self-defense? It seems nothing else in 3,470 pages came closer to illustrating criminal targeting of innocent children.
"Indirect Admissions"
"Another recurring pattern was indirect admissions, such as instructions to cease a certain activity that is a clear violation, meaning there was knowledge the crimes had previously occurred (e.g. orders to cease the use of deadly force during protests and the looting of humanitarian aid convoys)." SJAC found orders to stop certain moderately criminal activities, but wasn't impressed, claiming they "found no evidence to suggest that these directives were followed," allowing the abuses to continue. Orders to start such "violations" were found in at least once case (the motorcycles), but in general, SJAC admits by omission they also found no orders to initiate most cited practices - and no mention whatsoever of entire classes horrific crimes that have been widely alleged and believed.
The SJAC report does get specific about what kind of crimes were "admitted," possibly permitted, perhaps secretly ordered. "Soldiers were to cease certain activities, including" these, most likely listed for being the most severe violations found in a look at in the juiciest portions of the touted "Assad Files" (some with my notes added below).
- "stealing propane to fuel their personal vehicles"
- "shooting protestors" - "using military weapons during protests"
-- previously I've seen orders not to shoot, not an admission anyone was shooting (likely just repeating a standard order for good effect). Same here? And if they were shooting, was it at the kind of armed "demonstrators" involved in the "events" some documents refer to? (see aove, on "conflation") And still no one has seen and shared an order to start shooting, defensively or otherwise.
- "holding family members of suspects hostage"
-- documents said to prove "the detention of family members to encourage suspects to turn themselves in" - no details given)
- "the use of confiscated motorcycles by security personnel for patrols"
-- another SJAC file - unusually - shows the order to start this (22 Jan. 2012). Even this was called off, according the SJAC; this repressive regime would not use or profit from seized property, even if it was taken from terrorists and used to protect the citizens from them.
…
Anti-Sunni sectarianism / genocide policy
This has been widely alleged, its supposed factual bases repeatedly accepted, and yet ... The SJAC found nothing to suggest repression of the Sunni Arab majority ("aside from everything," some would stupidly argue; "the whole point of the repression is to crush the Sunnis"). Nor did they locate and mention anything illustrating promotion of Alawite supremacy of the kind alleged behind the raging genocide of Sunnis. These are two sides of the coin by which Assad's economy of evil is said to run, but SJAC and CIJA before them found nothing explicit to suggest either side of it (the coin is counterfeit!), nor about targeting of other religious minorities, despite some effort looking for it.
The biggest thing the SJAC found was sectarian tensions in Homs where Sunnis and Alawites (presumably, not stated) were arresting each other - "reciprocal sectarian kidnappings and killings peaked in Homs" - indeed - I had read of a spate of killings in roughly the first week of December. Gruesome and murky stuff: http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Early_December,_2011_Sectarian_Killings_in_Homs
The government was accusing civilians both sides of some part - not necessarily equal - in a crisis they wanted resolved. That seems to be the true situation, so maybe the true intent? Problem identified: "the use of civilians at some checkpoints to openly select targets." The civilians were drawn from neighborhoods on a rotating basis, and would tend to have a religion or sect. Alawites with some knowledge of Sunnis extremists in their vicinity might be useful right at a checkpoint. But it was done openly, so people could see an Alawite helping arrest a Sunni at some point, for example (the vice-versa being pretty unlikely). And guess who might go on a rampage against all Alawite citizens then? Who's more likely to reciprocate for that, as opposed to starting it?
The practice was to be banned ("as of this date it is prohibited"), and authorities were urged instead to "use covert security methods that do not incite hatred and tension among the citizens." But the SJAC and their ilk suspect, no matter what, increasing tensions and forcing Sunnis to kill their neighbors was the whole plan. They'll suspect this memo was just for internal show, and they really meant to amp it up, maybe taking these sectarian Alawite civilians on home raids, armed with machetes, call them "Shabiha," have them chant sectarian slogans as they slaughter multiple families, but leaving a miracle survivor or two from each house, and leaving all the bodies behind … It has been alleged, a lot. But the best suggestion SJAC could find in that direction was this relatively sane counter-terror policy that was only cancelled, I would guess, once it started getting the adjunct security and their families kidnapped and murdered.
However, the Kurds …
Context
Sample selection and relevance
Total: "SJAC possesses high quality scans of an estimated 483,000 pages of documents taken from government facilities," some of which (nearly 5,000) were collected by SJAC’s team, and far more (nearly 478,000) were collected by and loaned from CIJA. The latter should be some 60% of CIJA's touted collection of 800,000 pages (likely the more fruitful half, perhaps picked at random, surely not picked as the weaker half). All files from CIJA and SJAC will henceforth be considered part of the same "Assad Files."
First that larger pool of 483,000 was sorted into relevant and irrelevant documents, based on the criteria below, "to focus on documents related to state practices that fueled resentment prior to 2011 or that depicted orders and practices employed after unrest began in 2011." Anything earlier than the year 2000 was deemed irrelevant, and anything from there to 2010 was too, "unless they included information about the surveillance and targeting of political dissidents and/or ethnic/religious groups." Documents from 2011 and later "were deemed relevant unless they were publicly available documents." Copies of presidential decrees, a "police magazine" (article?) and "a procurement document from the department of agriculture" are cited as examples of things they found and filtered out.
Using those criteria, the report explains "approximately 18,000 pages" were found worthy of inclusion. Out of 483,000, that means just 3.7% were even broadly and potentially relevant. Around 80% of that is CIJA, same or worse likely applying across the remained of its larger collection - a claimed 800,000 pages, presumably at least 96% will be totally irrelevant (more like 29-30,000 "relevant" pages).
18,000 may have still seemed too many to analyze, so a solid sampling of about one in four documents was selected at random, with a randomization process described and sounding plausible (I'm no expert). They were apparently aiming for no less than 5,000 pages, and a multi-page document left it at exactly 5,003. FWIW this sample set includes a disproportionate share of SJAC files: 927 or 19% of their total, vs. 4,076 from CIJA (less than 1% of their collection).
Finally, some folder-mixing made it so some relevant documents were filtered out and irrelevant ones filtered in (unclear if that was a random or a "convenient" error). Considering how selection was randomized, the proportion should be 31% still irrelevant: 3,470 of the 5,003 wound up possibly mattering. (applied to the 18,000 files, we might expect ~12,400 "relevant" ones)
So these 3,470 pages should be representative of all "relevant" documents, about one in four (28%). And of those 3,470, they found only 848 "high priority" pages; just 24% wound up "relevant" enough as to include "names of specific detained individual(s)," or to give insights on the government's military strategy, OR to contain "information about the state’s involvement in violations of international law."
Finally just 214 of those 848 pages included the main thing everyone's been looking for, and acting like they've found in droves - "a confession to a possible violation" like, for example, direct orders for a criminal act. We all "know" there should be a lot of these. But only about 6% of the relevant sample set included such, even with "violation" defined broadly and "confession" set to include orders to cease activities that authorities never ordered in the first place.
214 out of 483,000 touted files means = 0.04% wound up arguably proving something criminal. From there, the quality of argument is what narrows the proven criminality down further, to what I presume is very near 0. I'd guess 0.002% or less (that's maybe 16 pages with actually illegal orders, in a total body of 800,000). And I would guess somewhere between 0 and 3 of those 16 would support any of the more extreme allegations we've heard over and over.
How SJAC got its files
As we've seen, it's not so much the documents as it is things you heard and believed somewhere else - plus the documents, blended together however works. Not that important here but interesting anyway is "SJAC’s documentation extraction process" as described in the report:
"To secure documents, SJAC’s Documentation Team members inside Syria entered abandoned government facilities" and recovered files, on just two big occasions: once was in Tabqa and Raqqa in 2013, after the area's conquest by the Al-Nusra-led Islamist coalition, and presumably prior to ISIS taking it over from them. Following the Turkish-backed offensive, "the Turkish-Syrian border was relatively unrestricted, and the Documentation Team members were able to leave Syria and transfer the physical documents to Turkey without hindrance." Then in Spring of 2015, Al-Nusra-led Islamists again overran most of Idlib province, again with Turkish assistance, and some more secret files were carelessly "abandoned" and shuffled over to Turkey by the SJAC's activists with no hassle.
So while SJAC claims independence and opposition to terrorism, they do move freely between terrorist-held areas and the Turkish border, and it almost seems like they operate nowhere else. The SJAC apparently enjoys Turkish state support, yet seems very supportive of Kurdish cultural rights, focusing heavily on that in this report, in lieu of anything sectarian against the Sunni Arab majority they could locate. Kurdish separatism is an issue all regional states have to deal with, and where Turkey and its proxies (SJAC?) have no room to preach about "repression" by others. So this line of criticism seems a bit hypocritical, besides being the best they could find.
(rough, incomplete)
The following article serves as a review of the report "Walls Have Ears: An Analysis of Classified Syrian Security Sector Documents," published April/May 2019 in Washington, DC. by Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), dedicated to "a Syria defined by justice, respect for human rights, and rule of law." Direct link: https://syriaaccountability.org/library/walls-have-ears/
As explained, the report is based on analysis of some 5,003 pages of documents "obtained from intelligence agency offices that were abandoned by the government during the Syrian war." Actually just 3,470 of those wound up relevant enough to consider, and a smaller portion of those are said to expose "serious human rights violations."
These include a vast majority from the "Assad Files" as I've covered them, from a separate but likeminded Committee for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) with a touted 800,000 pages worth. The Globe and Mail (Canada) recently spoke with Canadian Bill Wiley, CIJA's founder, who said the files ("more than 800,000 pages" worth) present “the best evidence against a regime since Nuremberg,” and is “much, much better” than what was presented in court against Slobodan Milosevic. Huh. I leave it to the reader to decide what that means.
Other documents are from the SJAC's own smaller collection of about 5,000 pages. From what's cited and not, the SJAC's files seem to be more of the same (legitimate documents but lacking in criminal orders). As such, they should be included in, and add a sliver to the "Assad Files," which is not exclusively the domain of CIJA.
With a total of 3,470 pages examined for this report, this is the largest body of such documents specifically looked at and assessed in total, and our best view yet into how the "Assad Files" in general really look. So far it's been down to noting the weakness of their chosen best examples. Here, we get a sort of overview of a very large set - good and bad examples - chosen supposedly at random.
In that light, I'll re-explain their stated selection process (but further down - see "sample selection and relevance") to show why this sampling matters and helps clarify the significance of patterns illustrated here. First the patterns - what kinds of alleged regime crimes wound up having evidence located, and which did not.
Overview
Mass irrelevance
As the file selection process shows (see below) of all "Assad Files" - a vast majority probably over 96% - are completely irrelevant. Of the more relevant 3-4%, this sampling suggests a majority also have no bearing on relevant subjects (only 848 "high priority" pages vs. 2,622 not so high). And even with those ... the examples shown thus far suggest nothing terribly incriminating was found, and that impression runs right through everything the SJAC adds here.
The juicy core: admitted violations
Of the selected pages (3,470) only about 6% of them (214 pages) "included a confession to a possible violation" - a criminal order given in a top-secret file is the main thing the CIJA and others have been suggesting they have lots of. Some are orders for acts most readers would disprove of, but this 214 pages with "confessions" also include an unclear percentage with "indirect admissions, such as instructions to cease a certain activity that is a clear violation" So orders to stop an activity - ordered in the first place or not - count as "admissions." "SJAC found no evidence to suggest that these directives (to cease violations) were followed," perhaps allowing violations to continue. But they also admit by omission they found no orders to start any serious abuses.
Even with "violations" seeming relatively mundane, or vague and poorly-explained (see below), and with "admissions" to them defined so broadly, just 214 out of some 3,500 pages fit the bill. This suggests close to 6% of all equally "relevant" documents across the "Assad Files" will include such a broadly-defined "admission" - probably just as grossly padded as this, and probably including zero real support to the opposition's outlandish mythology.
Seven shared pages
11 pages from the sample set were deemed important enough by SJAC to share in their original form and translated to English (with minor redactions). But four of these are about "repression of the Kurds" and date from 2010, before the terrorist insurgency and current allegations began. (such dated files are included, ostensibly, because measures in this span MIGHT feed into relevant resentments in 2011. But it wasn't an uprising of repressed Kurds, was it?) Just seven shared pages concern all other alleged crimes from 2011 and forward, combined! This select seven has a lot riding on it - they had better be good. But here are all of them, briefly summarized:
- orders to “do the necessary” regarding a certain journalist (presumably arrest her, if she re-entered Syria)
- orders from 2014 to destroy vehicles left at checkpoints and suspected of being rigged with explosives, but as SJAC complains ... without a reminder to avoid civilian casualties (why is a reminder needed?), and without urging troops to search the vehicles first, which ... SJAC thinks is the best way to be sure it's rigged to blow up?
- An admission of at least three children (or "juveniles under age 18" as given) were arrested in one place (unclear) during 2013-14. Aged 14-16 at the time, depending, all three were accused of terrorism-militant activities, including joining armed groups as child soldiers (they recruit usually from age 13 and up), training to shoot, and even shooting in militant attacks. Also, they were arrested, and that's a "violation" by the government?
- In December, 2011, orders stop having civilians in Homs help run security checkpoints and openly identify targets for arrest. The practice was raising sectarian tensions, which had led to kidnapping and killings by civilians on both sides (app. meaning Sunni and Alawite), and must be stopped. See ACLOS posting.
- Orders to use seized motorcycles for new counter-terror group (according to SJAC, this practice was later halted, or "passively admitted," besides here being seen ordered.)
- A warning of likely chemical weapons use by terrorist, using materials seized from Libya's stocks, in order to frame the government (as it happens, about 2 weeks before the first such allegations I know of, in February, 2012) See ACLOS posting.
- An official felt there was a conspiracy of lies against the Syrian government, and wanted thoughts on it.
And remember these seven are probably among the best examples they could find, out of ~3,500 potentially relevant pages, to illustrate those "serious human rights violations" the SJAC want us to believe in.
Torture
The report admits "None of the pages in the sample set explicitly admitted to the use of torture, despite widespread and consistent accusations..." That's zero out of 3,470. But the SJAC prefers the accusations, of course, and suggest as probable that "despite the government’s detailed records, certain topics were intentionally omitted or concealed in written communications." This would be convenient - everything you want to find but can't must have been ordered in more secret files since burned, or issued verbally, or in code, with a system of winks and nods, or perhaps by pheromones as with ants. But never could they consider that such thing simply were never ordered by the Syrian government. SJAC also notes, as if in desperation: "At least one page, however, included a handwritten note from a detained individual who confessed to crimes and swore that he was not beaten or tortured during his arrest, raising suspicions that he may have indeed been tortured or mistreated in detention." So they have some pretty self-raising suspicions, that enjoy only inverse support from the documents.
Mass killing of prisoners
Among 3,470 pages, enough mention detainees that a "vast majority" of them don't mention a death, let alone a murder, ordered or otherwise. It seems reference to just one death in custody was found, and they have to doubt its claims that he died from an infection, stemming from an injury sustained during his arrest. As they put it, the files have the patient treated in a hospital and declared stable, only to die anyway, apparently just before he was to be transferred to a Mukhabarat prison (unclear timeline). To the SJAC, "The YouTube video" of the victim's body, and not any located document, "indicates that he may have experienced torture and other mistreatment in custody," This is based on noted "bruising" that might actually be infection-related, for example.
This one case alone gave enough material to "raise questions" to this effect, to people over-eager to see them raised. One death with no clear admission or order involved actually raises the question "where the hell are the orders behind the alleged mass of prisoner killings?" Was this too "omitted or concealed"? Of course they would have to find this likely enough it's probably true...
The "Caesar Photos" indeed prove something quite terrible and very large. My analysis of the timeline of CP victims suggests these abused bodies were produced at an alarming rate - averaging around 1,000 per month from late 2012 through August, 2013 - all with no reflection in official orders? The given story of systematic killing in regime prisons has long coat-tails, provided by those very many photographs as "proof," and which these Assad Files tend to ride on. They focus on the same class of allegations, with CIJA trying to craft a paperwork version of that stronger story; the two are repeatedly used together in moving videos by UK "news" outlets, leaning against each other as is convenient. But closer inspection reveals how they probably do not show the same thing, as sold. The CIJA and SJAC have so far failed to find any remotely clear link between that criminality and the top-secret communications that should reflect it somewhere - if that mass extermination of prisoners was ever the work of the government. There was a specific effort - or two - that seems like well-researched tries at a timeline match-up with two specific CP victims, both pinned on branch 227 in a short time span. But I was able to almost prove that both of these best tries were phony. That's the best it gets, so no line-up; these numbers and documents refer to different people in different prison systems! As it stands, the "Assad Files" line-up with a growing body of evidence suggesting the thousands of murdered men and boys in those "Caesar Photos" were killed by others (probably Jaish Al-Islam) on the "moderate Islamist" opposition side (Al-Qaeda-Al-Nusra and the rest, aside from ISIS), whom the CIJA admits it works with, and does not investigate at all.
Targeting journalists and coded orders
At least one file (November 18, 2011) speaks to targeting of journalists and well enough to include in full. A foreign female journalist (name redacted) was considered criminal for her pro-militant reporting and agitation, and had been barred from Syria. There are unexplained orders to "do the necessary" - a standard phrase, here probably meaning keep monitoring her two known phone numbers, and arrest her if she was caught back in Syria. That's not terrible at all, unless one imagines hidden meanings. And it seems nothing more criminal along these lines came up in the sample set.
SJAC imagines hidden meaning here, proposing that the standard phrase "do the necessary" (or “take the necessary measures” or similar) - as used with the case above - can be a code ordering killing or other criminal activity. Do cue the mood music. "The difficulty" they opted to have "was in understanding whether the phrase was a relevant indicator of a potential violation or a simple catch-all used in even mundane circumstances." The doubt comes not from anything in the files, but from military and intelligence "defectors" lodging some unverified and propagandistic claims.
- one defector said that a similar - but different - phrase meant to arrest or kill journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed, under murky circumstances, allegedly on government orders, but seemingly with no supports found in the Assad Files - just from the allegations of this defector.
- some 63 defectors all told HRW in 2011 that another similar phrase - "By all means necessary!" - meant to shoot and kill peaceful protesters ("about half" said killing was explicitly ordered, even with death quotas given, the rest all felt it was hinted but not said outright. All agreed the orders were issued verbally, not on paper, and in fact "Ameen" said "On paper, it said “Stop the protesters,” but verbally he explicitly said, “Kill.”")
The best example SJAC found in their search suggested "do the necessary" meant to paint over some graffiti (reported as done) and then do "the necessary" with the law-breakers if they were ever found. That's supposed to sound ominous, but it probably isn't. With the above case around the journalist (by the way, not Marie Colvin), it probably means monitor and arrest a person, if warranted.
…
Admission to the Commission of Crimes
This is the key thing you should find lots of here, in top-secret orders for said crimes, reports of carrying them out, etc. SJAC identified 214 pages that included a confession to a possible violation. That's ~ 6% of the sample set. Of these 214 pages, a majority are "implicated human rights abuses" (violating right to freedom of assembly, due process rights, etc.) while "a much smaller number of pages implicated violations of international humanitarian law," more specifically criminal activities. But generally, the gravity of offense and degree of implication are left unclear.
"The largest percentage" of those related to "protests, including surveillance of suspected government dissidents, wanted lists and arrest campaigns, and government security forces’ activities during protests" (or maybe during those armed "events" they also refer to - dealing with immediate militant problems, not issuing orders for massacres, prison torture and other acts of random villainy.
"The types of alleged violations which the Syrian government directly admitted to in the documents" - which should include the most severe violations possibly located - are given as:
Violation of Freedom of Expression and Assembly.
Violation of Due Process Rights.
Arbitrary Detention and Death of Children.
Violations of the Principle of Distinction.
Manipulation of Humanitarian Aid.
They found nothing more serious, like systematic genocide, or it would be noted. Let's consider a couple of these.
Conflation of Unarmed Civilians, Armed Groups, and Terrorists.
…
I can vouch for some abiguity in the wording. As we've seen, the CIJA deliberately exaggerates any conflation and then ignores the militant part, to falsely claim a government strategy in 2011 of rounding up peaceful protest organizers. (it was in fact specified all wanted targets were wanted for violent crimes including mudering and "terrorizing" citizens, and some of the militants were also organizing some kind of armed "demonstrations." A rare glimpse of the original document proves it contains nothing criminal, but it was sold based on distorted paraphrasing as the "linchpin" of the CIJA's case against government officials. Let's keep calling it their linchpin. It probably will tie in nicely with the rest, with reasonable actions distorted to sound criminal... nothing in the SJAC report or previously does much to counter that impression.
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/11/revolution-unraveled-assad-files-now-an-achilles-heel-for-war-crimes-narrative/
Is this what they meant? If so, there's my guess; "demonstraions" has a different meaning than usual. Two different documents clarify these events had someone "arming" them, and were organized by armed militants, not peaceful activists. The word they used for "demonstrations" (as CIJA had translated it in at least one important case from 2011) is التظاهرات (altazaharat). This Google-translates vaguely to "events" and is not the usual word for "demonstrations" ( المظاهرات - almazaharat, very similar), nor the usual word for events ( الأحداث - al'ahdath - not similar at all). If spelling = meaning (which it doesn't), this word suggests an unusual "event" that looks like a protest but isn't. That might be about its meaning, as used.
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2018/09/painting-vs-reality-in-syria-crisis.html
It might be pretentious for this non-Arabic speaker to challenge the SJAC reading, but I challenge it (after consulting a couple native speakers). The word used apparently means a hard-to-classify "event" that involve both protest and shooting, and used in line with thinking shaped by years of emergency law, by which anti-government, Islamist, or sectarian demonstrations like these were roughly as illegal as the armed violence that tends to come with them. People involved in these "events" do, as translated, "demonstrate" and are called "demonstrators" (usual words). But they're clearly armed, as it says, and in other contexts with no protests at the moment, it's probably the same people they refer to as "armed gangs."
The flip-side of this reading is there would be no distinct word for non-violent demonstrator. Unless, perhaps, they did exactly what I just did: specify this one was peaceful. For all we know they do this, and the SJAC just didn't mention it, as they claim deliberate conflation, presumably to "justify" that plan to shoot down harmless protesters (for which there's still no clear evidence whatsoever in the "Assad Files.")
Manipulation of Humanitarian Aid"
From the given details, it sounds like questionable controls were placed on aid deliveries, perhaps with political conditions attached (limiting the number of aid trucks allowed in, etc.) This isn't the best-sounding practice, but let's pause to consider what it also doesn't sound like. There's nothing mentioned about imposing a total starvation blockade anywhere, when it's been alleged just about everywhere, and generally believed. The CIJA has never mentioned finding such a thing either. "Omitted or concealed"?
Even if there were orders somewhere, the mechanism of its implementation remains mysterious. The visual record is clear that militants and allies eat as well as they like (see Yaser al-Doumani's weight-gain during the siege of E Ghouta). Accounts and images suggest most people suffer shortages (due mostly to hoarding and price-gouging by militants and allies) with real health effects, but nearly all of them keep finding enough to eat they stay alive, at least. And then we've been shown what must be a select few people get entirely cut off from food, probably water and all care (or sometimes fall ill and aren't treated), but as soon as they finally pass away, concerned people are able to get that skin-and-bones corpse on video, shown off as to prove Assad's starvation blockade. How "Assad" got the people in these rebel-held areas to stop sharing food with each other was never explained, and no one pressed for an explanation. Also, as CIJA and SJAC confirm by omission, no orders related to such a (human decency embargo?) have been located. The evil behind this must have another source. (Is there another power with a hand in Syria known to use total starvation blockades for real? Consider their proxies.) (Below: Yaser al-Doumani vs. a contrast in the alleged regime starving of Yarmouk Palestinian camp.
"Arbitrary Detention and Death of Children"
The report notes "One page was a telegram request for a list of children being held at security offices, indicating that the security apparatus was aware of such practices." As noted above, one shared page gives a reply: three teenage boys (all aged around 15) are listed as taken in for membership in armed militant groups and related activities (training to shoot, joining in attacks, filming attacks, suspicious surveillance of pro-government civilians, etc.) Militants recruit children, the government arrests them as needed, and regime officials were aware of this! They almost surely approved of it! I would too! (below: cropped from SJAC's page translation)
SJAC reports two further documents out of 3,470 referred to three other juveniles arrested for things that aren't even crimes in most countries (but are in Syria, and it's known). One refers to a boy arrested "for participation in protests" of a disallowed sort, and the other is about two kids taken in "for supposedly saying “shame” when passing a photo of Assad." Ages weren't given. We may not approve of these cases, but is it fit for a trial at the Hague?
"Another page listed names of individuals who were killed in clashes at a protest in Deir Ezzor, which included minors." Who killed who and all other circumstances are left totally unclear. Maybe those killed were more opposition child soldiers killed in self-defense? It seems nothing else in 3,470 pages came closer to illustrating criminal targeting of innocent children.
"Indirect Admissions"
"Another recurring pattern was indirect admissions, such as instructions to cease a certain activity that is a clear violation, meaning there was knowledge the crimes had previously occurred (e.g. orders to cease the use of deadly force during protests and the looting of humanitarian aid convoys)." SJAC found orders to stop certain moderately criminal activities, but wasn't impressed, claiming they "found no evidence to suggest that these directives were followed," allowing the abuses to continue. Orders to start such "violations" were found in at least once case (the motorcycles), but in general, SJAC admits by omission they also found no orders to initiate most cited practices - and no mention whatsoever of entire classes horrific crimes that have been widely alleged and believed.
The SJAC report does get specific about what kind of crimes were "admitted," possibly permitted, perhaps secretly ordered. "Soldiers were to cease certain activities, including" these, most likely listed for being the most severe violations found in a look at in the juiciest portions of the touted "Assad Files" (some with my notes added below).
- "stealing propane to fuel their personal vehicles"
- "shooting protestors" - "using military weapons during protests"
-- previously I've seen orders not to shoot, not an admission anyone was shooting (likely just repeating a standard order for good effect). Same here? And if they were shooting, was it at the kind of armed "demonstrators" involved in the "events" some documents refer to? (see aove, on "conflation") And still no one has seen and shared an order to start shooting, defensively or otherwise.
- "holding family members of suspects hostage"
-- documents said to prove "the detention of family members to encourage suspects to turn themselves in" - no details given)
- "the use of confiscated motorcycles by security personnel for patrols"
-- another SJAC file - unusually - shows the order to start this (22 Jan. 2012). Even this was called off, according the SJAC; this repressive regime would not use or profit from seized property, even if it was taken from terrorists and used to protect the citizens from them.
…
Anti-Sunni sectarianism / genocide policy
This has been widely alleged, its supposed factual bases repeatedly accepted, and yet ... The SJAC found nothing to suggest repression of the Sunni Arab majority ("aside from everything," some would stupidly argue; "the whole point of the repression is to crush the Sunnis"). Nor did they locate and mention anything illustrating promotion of Alawite supremacy of the kind alleged behind the raging genocide of Sunnis. These are two sides of the coin by which Assad's economy of evil is said to run, but SJAC and CIJA before them found nothing explicit to suggest either side of it (the coin is counterfeit!), nor about targeting of other religious minorities, despite some effort looking for it.
The biggest thing the SJAC found was sectarian tensions in Homs where Sunnis and Alawites (presumably, not stated) were arresting each other - "reciprocal sectarian kidnappings and killings peaked in Homs" - indeed - I had read of a spate of killings in roughly the first week of December. Gruesome and murky stuff: http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Early_December,_2011_Sectarian_Killings_in_Homs
The government was accusing civilians both sides of some part - not necessarily equal - in a crisis they wanted resolved. That seems to be the true situation, so maybe the true intent? Problem identified: "the use of civilians at some checkpoints to openly select targets." The civilians were drawn from neighborhoods on a rotating basis, and would tend to have a religion or sect. Alawites with some knowledge of Sunnis extremists in their vicinity might be useful right at a checkpoint. But it was done openly, so people could see an Alawite helping arrest a Sunni at some point, for example (the vice-versa being pretty unlikely). And guess who might go on a rampage against all Alawite citizens then? Who's more likely to reciprocate for that, as opposed to starting it?
The practice was to be banned ("as of this date it is prohibited"), and authorities were urged instead to "use covert security methods that do not incite hatred and tension among the citizens." But the SJAC and their ilk suspect, no matter what, increasing tensions and forcing Sunnis to kill their neighbors was the whole plan. They'll suspect this memo was just for internal show, and they really meant to amp it up, maybe taking these sectarian Alawite civilians on home raids, armed with machetes, call them "Shabiha," have them chant sectarian slogans as they slaughter multiple families, but leaving a miracle survivor or two from each house, and leaving all the bodies behind … It has been alleged, a lot. But the best suggestion SJAC could find in that direction was this relatively sane counter-terror policy that was only cancelled, I would guess, once it started getting the adjunct security and their families kidnapped and murdered.
However, the Kurds …
Context
Sample selection and relevance
Total: "SJAC possesses high quality scans of an estimated 483,000 pages of documents taken from government facilities," some of which (nearly 5,000) were collected by SJAC’s team, and far more (nearly 478,000) were collected by and loaned from CIJA. The latter should be some 60% of CIJA's touted collection of 800,000 pages (likely the more fruitful half, perhaps picked at random, surely not picked as the weaker half). All files from CIJA and SJAC will henceforth be considered part of the same "Assad Files."
First that larger pool of 483,000 was sorted into relevant and irrelevant documents, based on the criteria below, "to focus on documents related to state practices that fueled resentment prior to 2011 or that depicted orders and practices employed after unrest began in 2011." Anything earlier than the year 2000 was deemed irrelevant, and anything from there to 2010 was too, "unless they included information about the surveillance and targeting of political dissidents and/or ethnic/religious groups." Documents from 2011 and later "were deemed relevant unless they were publicly available documents." Copies of presidential decrees, a "police magazine" (article?) and "a procurement document from the department of agriculture" are cited as examples of things they found and filtered out.
Using those criteria, the report explains "approximately 18,000 pages" were found worthy of inclusion. Out of 483,000, that means just 3.7% were even broadly and potentially relevant. Around 80% of that is CIJA, same or worse likely applying across the remained of its larger collection - a claimed 800,000 pages, presumably at least 96% will be totally irrelevant (more like 29-30,000 "relevant" pages).
18,000 may have still seemed too many to analyze, so a solid sampling of about one in four documents was selected at random, with a randomization process described and sounding plausible (I'm no expert). They were apparently aiming for no less than 5,000 pages, and a multi-page document left it at exactly 5,003. FWIW this sample set includes a disproportionate share of SJAC files: 927 or 19% of their total, vs. 4,076 from CIJA (less than 1% of their collection).
Finally, some folder-mixing made it so some relevant documents were filtered out and irrelevant ones filtered in (unclear if that was a random or a "convenient" error). Considering how selection was randomized, the proportion should be 31% still irrelevant: 3,470 of the 5,003 wound up possibly mattering. (applied to the 18,000 files, we might expect ~12,400 "relevant" ones)
So these 3,470 pages should be representative of all "relevant" documents, about one in four (28%). And of those 3,470, they found only 848 "high priority" pages; just 24% wound up "relevant" enough as to include "names of specific detained individual(s)," or to give insights on the government's military strategy, OR to contain "information about the state’s involvement in violations of international law."
Finally just 214 of those 848 pages included the main thing everyone's been looking for, and acting like they've found in droves - "a confession to a possible violation" like, for example, direct orders for a criminal act. We all "know" there should be a lot of these. But only about 6% of the relevant sample set included such, even with "violation" defined broadly and "confession" set to include orders to cease activities that authorities never ordered in the first place.
214 out of 483,000 touted files means = 0.04% wound up arguably proving something criminal. From there, the quality of argument is what narrows the proven criminality down further, to what I presume is very near 0. I'd guess 0.002% or less (that's maybe 16 pages with actually illegal orders, in a total body of 800,000). And I would guess somewhere between 0 and 3 of those 16 would support any of the more extreme allegations we've heard over and over.
How SJAC got its files
As we've seen, it's not so much the documents as it is things you heard and believed somewhere else - plus the documents, blended together however works. Not that important here but interesting anyway is "SJAC’s documentation extraction process" as described in the report:
"To secure documents, SJAC’s Documentation Team members inside Syria entered abandoned government facilities" and recovered files, on just two big occasions: once was in Tabqa and Raqqa in 2013, after the area's conquest by the Al-Nusra-led Islamist coalition, and presumably prior to ISIS taking it over from them. Following the Turkish-backed offensive, "the Turkish-Syrian border was relatively unrestricted, and the Documentation Team members were able to leave Syria and transfer the physical documents to Turkey without hindrance." Then in Spring of 2015, Al-Nusra-led Islamists again overran most of Idlib province, again with Turkish assistance, and some more secret files were carelessly "abandoned" and shuffled over to Turkey by the SJAC's activists with no hassle.
So while SJAC claims independence and opposition to terrorism, they do move freely between terrorist-held areas and the Turkish border, and it almost seems like they operate nowhere else. The SJAC apparently enjoys Turkish state support, yet seems very supportive of Kurdish cultural rights, focusing heavily on that in this report, in lieu of anything sectarian against the Sunni Arab majority they could locate. Kurdish separatism is an issue all regional states have to deal with, and where Turkey and its proxies (SJAC?) have no room to preach about "repression" by others. So this line of criticism seems a bit hypocritical, besides being the best they could find.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Marie Colvin's Killing and the Assad Files
Assad Files 2018 part 4
February 10, 2019
I've been following the "Assad Files" and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) imperfectly - I've put it wrongly as "Committee for …" in general, for one thing. Oops. I was so focused on how little evidence it seems they actually found, and how much spin they have to engage in to make it seem like they found a lot.
Brushing up now, I see I had also missed the CIJA's role last year in the court case over the death of Marie Colvin, the tough, eye-patched American war correspondent with the New York Times. She was famously killed by shelling after sneaking into terrorist-occupied Baba Amr, Homs, in February, 2012, as the government was trying to reclaim it. What could have been an accident - or even a terrorist false-flag operation - was widely suspected of being a deliberate assassination by the government. Colvin's family has been making that case in court, seeking accountability from top government officials they feel must have ordered the hit.
That's a very basic intro, and I still haven't analyzed this case in much detail. But it came up in my digging that the CIJA's trove of top-secret files was used as evidence in her case - nearly 200 files' worth of them.
Anne Barnard, NYT, 9 April, 2018 (Syrian Forces Aimed to Kill Journalists, U.S. Court Is Told) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/world/middleeast/syria-marie-colvin-death.html
The Smoking Gun Evidence: From "Ulysses" - Not From the "Assad Files"
A Colvin family lawyer explained the documents “lay out the command and control structure and reveal things that even Syria experts don’t know,” about who was or would have been in charge of any criminal actions. And they "allow us to reconstruct the broader policy planning that identified media workers as targets from very early on in the conflict.”
That supposed policy might reflect on her case, but there's no mention of anything in those nearly 200 pages actually showing the suspected order to target Colvin herself. That's not to say there wasn't one, since the CIJA didn't necessarily get every order generated. But they find some targeting orders (see below), maybe others, maybe most or even all of them ... but not this one.
"Lawyers are also citing several sworn witness accounts," Barnard notes. In fact the key evidence, as before the paper chase, comes from the ramblings of a few Islamist chatterboxes full of stories of regime evil. This doesn't seem to be unusual; every criminal act blamed on the regime lacks documented order that can be found. Luckily, the CIJA also has several defectors on file (perhaps the same ones presented in court?) to help fill in the very large blank spots left by the touted paperwork.
In this case, the main details come from one man with a code-name. "Ulysses" - another defector with a classical Western nickname like "Caesar" - who claims he witnessed and learned about the plot, and in great detail at that. As Barnard put it:
"Ulysses, who remains in exile, told the lawyers that the military had ordered an attack on Ms. Colvin and her colleagues as part of a broader effort — directed from the top and laid out in the documents — to track, arrest and target demonstrators, coordinators and “those who tarnish the image of Syria” by talking to journalists and other foreigners."
We'll come back to this supposed policy and what we've learned of it previously. Ulysses - not the top secret files - had several points of evidence he allegedly learned to prove they killed Colvin:
* "Syria’s powerful intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk, received information from “friendly Lebanese officials” that foreign journalists were crossing the Syrian border to reach Homs and instructed the commander of the military-security committee in the central Syrian city to “capture the journalists” and “take all necessary measures.” Ulysses said that phrase customarily “authorized killing if needed.”"
* "Syrian activists brought in Ms. Colvin and a British journalist, Paul Conroy, through a mile-long, four-foot-wide water pipe. Soon after, Ulysses said, an informant told intelligence officials that the journalists were at the activists’ media center and described its rough location."
* "Ms. Colvin issued a live report from the media center ... That, Ulysses said, allowed the government to use surveillance equipment to pinpoint the location, matching the informant’s report. He recalled the deputy head of the Computer and Signals Section of Branch 261 of the military intelligence department in Homs saying, “There was a broadcast tonight from the same location.” Then the official added: “The boss is very happy.”"
Then the following day, we're to gather, the regime figured they'd still be there and attacked. As survivor Paul Conroy described, there was shelling at a distance on one side of the media center and then the other, then again but closer and closer until they hit the center - as if to clarify it was no accident. I tend to believe that, and I don't suspect it was an accident. But it's irresponsible to ignore that the terrorists hosting them might have done it. Why not? Because they hadn't pinpointed their location in so many ways?
Now if the CIJA had their 750,000 or so pages of top-secret files, workers and software to comb through it, for several years now ... and they found some 200 pages with relevant information, mostly I guess to show who was the boss of what, but nothing directly related to the Colvin killing … it seems like no documents reflect the plot. One entirely plausible explanation is that, despite what this "Ulysses" says, there was no such order. Someone else targeted and killed Marie Colvin.
A Cited Targeting Order
At least and perhaps just one document, of the nearly 200 from the CIJA that was submitted, suggests deadly targeting of journalists.
Barnard describes the relentless shelling of "Baba Amr, a neighborhood in Homs where opposition activists had set up a media center to communicate with journalists." It's also where terrorists were abducting people, faking shelling videos, doing much unknown … but it's a place with a media center, and later Marie Colvin at that center, and it was shelled, so … this supports targeting of media.
But it gets more specific:
"One document shows how military and security forces intercepted communications between journalists and the activists" in Baba Amr, "in early 2012" (same place and close in time to the Colvin case, for what it's worth). "Intelligence officers passed on information about a journalist for Al Jazeera to a military special forces unit with the instruction, “Take the necessary measures."
As noted above, "Ulysses" says this basic phrase “authorized killing if needed.” But from the paperwork itself, without that bit of 'codebreaking' - it's not clear what those measures were - arrest, murder, arrest and torture to death, rescue from terrorist kidnappers, or other. The text likely did clarify but it didn't include kill, so the CIJA redacted the explanation, left the ambiguous quote, and presented that. If mood music could be attached, they would probably choose a few ominous notes by a string section here.
Also it must be noted some Al-Jazeera "journalists" are clearly in the same team and on message with allies holding guns, and sometimes hostages. Some of these terrorists get a camera, maybe "media training," and then get hired to provide propaganda videos Al-Jazeera and others run as news. He may have been targeted (for arrest, probably) not over his reporting, of facts or lies, but over his violent or criminal activities, or just for questioning, to find out where the bases and hostages are, perhaps.
Still, it seems no such orders relating to Ms. Colvin and her associates was located. They're limited to showing how there's at least one possible precedent - depending on those unclear details.
The CCMC Targeting Backdrop
But they had more color to share. "Ulysses" cites a clear pattern, which he includes Colvin in, by which the regime would, as Barnard put it, "track, arrest and target demonstrators, coordinators and “those who tarnish the image of Syria” by talking to journalists and other foreigners."
That 'tarnish" quote suggests he's referring to the CIJA's files on the August, 2011 creation of a Central Crisis Management Cell in Damascus. I've covered this previously in what could be called my linchpin article so far, run proudly at 21st Century Wire. The files describing this body became the "linchpin" of the CIJA case against Syrian officials, explaining who was in charge of what, allowing for a list of names. It was said the plan was to round up protesters for nothing more, and to do so in an organized way. The "crisis" was just one of free speech, and all the soldiers and policemen getting killed by foreign-backed militants (including in Hama just a few days before the CCMC's first meeting) was not even an issue.
But the only view we get of the actual document - thanks to a slip by the editors at El-Pais English - shows their names are all over a plan to stop "armed gangs" from some of these crimes, which they are known to have been engaged in at the time:
* "vandalism”
* “looting”
* “pillaging”
* “attacking state institutions”
* “killing and terrorizing citizens.”
These are the wanted people, in the CCMC's outlined plans. The orders are to "arrest them." Then, the document continues, some among those militants also "tarnish/harm the image of Syria" by speaking to the foreign media. The orders are to arrest them, especially. It's not mentioned here, but the government position (supported by much evidence) is these people speak to the media falsely, denying any militancy on their own side to help blame their own crimes on the government. That's not free speech, but part of a criminal operation. That's the government view; militants who also spread lies in the media were wanted as the especially dangerous class they are.
Folks who organize protests were also mentioned as targets. Indeed, "demonstrations/events" and related words appear in the apparently real orders we can finally see, but their meaning here seems a bit different than usual. These "demonstrations" are organized by militants, and involved funding and "armaments," the sources of which Damascus wanted to know. Further, any militants involved in these activities via the Local Coordinating Committees was especially wanted for arrest and questioning.
It seems "Ulysses" still finds the fake version of this policy and that 'tarnish' quote central to showing how the regime went around killing journalists. But in reality, that's attached to the anti-militant policy described above. How does a well-informed insider miss such details? I propose he does it on purpose, to further the information Jihad.
As Barnard explains, the CIJA documents filed for the Colvin case "appear to reveal the workings of the Central Crisis Management Cell, a committee reporting to Mr. Assad that was created to counter the uprisings that broke out across Syria in 2011." This, minus its crucial militant context, is central to the false picture painted in court, as it has been in the court of public opinion previously.
The skewed view of "Ulysses" was borne out here, not by other documents, but by two more defectors Barnard spoke with, and who were called on in the Colvin case.
The original smuggler of the CCMC documents, Abdelmajid Barakat "said he heard discussions of plans to fabricate evidence of rebels attacking civilians." There's been no mention of any documents relating to such plans. Could this be idle talk, or invented talk? Yes, the latter in particular. But it was taken as real talk, and a real plan that was acted on.
The same guy says he "saw documents that identified Syrians providing information to journalists as a top national security threat demanding a lethal response." But he only provided documents like the ones discussed above, with no mention of that on paper yet. The ones we can see only say "arrest them." If they were to shoot back during the attempt, they may get a lethal response, but that's a bit past speaking to journalists, right? Others have found these orders central, apparently failing to find anything juicier ... like the files Barakat could only recall seeing. False recall perhaps?
Anwar Malek, an Algerian who had been part of an Arab League monitoring mission, says Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, President Assad’s brother-in-law, and a member of the CCMC, told him openly that, as Barnard put it:
"...it was necessary to kill civilians to defeat “the terrorists,” that “he would have been able to destroy Baba Amr in 10 minutes if there were not any video cameras” and that foreign journalists reporting from Baba Amr were “agents” of Israel and other countries... "‘For us, these are terrorists,’” Mr. Malek quoted him as saying. “They are targets for our military services and our security forces.”
I highly doubt this is how the conversation truly went. According to Barnard's article, Malek is sure a 5-year-old boy was really killed by a regime sniper, and felt the Arab League mission was compromised for rejecting that claim, so he quit. He says he got death threat phone calls, "and his convoy to Damascus was shot at. The government blamed rebels, but Mr. Malek believed the attack was staged by the government." Sure he believes that. I mean, it only makes sense … to certain people. He's quick to believe every Islamist claim. He's characteristic of every selected source run by the corporate-controlled media-government system to explain the "truth" about Syria. It's supposed to be a big deal that he agrees with the others in his general tone.
And still, he didn't apparently have any specific information on the Marie Colvin case. Nor did Mr. Barakat, nor the "Assad Files." Just "Ulysses" did.
Conclusion
So there's the evidence against the regime in the Colvin case, from this best effort to make it seem convincing. It's not very convincing. Mr. Malek especially was there to provide the color, or mood music, to help conjure belief in a crime for which there seems to be no reliable evidence.
The "Assad Files" were there to make it seem like top-secret papers agree with these handy omniscient defectors, all reflecting a real government policy. But the documents, which seem to reflect reality, call these liars out. They don't work well on the same team.
Which part should be demoted? If "justice" over all these alleged crimes is your interest, clearly it's the reality-reflecting "Assad Files" you'll want to lose. And they already do, for the most part. They skip over hundreds of thousands of pages entirely, to focus on a select few, used simply as pools from which to extract spooky-sounding quotes, and the names of people they want to see in jail, ignoring or deleting all the context they need to achieve that.
February 10, 2019
I've been following the "Assad Files" and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) imperfectly - I've put it wrongly as "Committee for …" in general, for one thing. Oops. I was so focused on how little evidence it seems they actually found, and how much spin they have to engage in to make it seem like they found a lot.
Brushing up now, I see I had also missed the CIJA's role last year in the court case over the death of Marie Colvin, the tough, eye-patched American war correspondent with the New York Times. She was famously killed by shelling after sneaking into terrorist-occupied Baba Amr, Homs, in February, 2012, as the government was trying to reclaim it. What could have been an accident - or even a terrorist false-flag operation - was widely suspected of being a deliberate assassination by the government. Colvin's family has been making that case in court, seeking accountability from top government officials they feel must have ordered the hit.
That's a very basic intro, and I still haven't analyzed this case in much detail. But it came up in my digging that the CIJA's trove of top-secret files was used as evidence in her case - nearly 200 files' worth of them.
Anne Barnard, NYT, 9 April, 2018 (Syrian Forces Aimed to Kill Journalists, U.S. Court Is Told) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/world/middleeast/syria-marie-colvin-death.html
The filings, nearly 200 in total, are part of a far larger cache of some 700,000 records that have been smuggled out of Syria by defectors, activists and others and meticulously collected by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which wants to build war-crimes cases against the Syrian government.
The Smoking Gun Evidence: From "Ulysses" - Not From the "Assad Files"
A Colvin family lawyer explained the documents “lay out the command and control structure and reveal things that even Syria experts don’t know,” about who was or would have been in charge of any criminal actions. And they "allow us to reconstruct the broader policy planning that identified media workers as targets from very early on in the conflict.”
That supposed policy might reflect on her case, but there's no mention of anything in those nearly 200 pages actually showing the suspected order to target Colvin herself. That's not to say there wasn't one, since the CIJA didn't necessarily get every order generated. But they find some targeting orders (see below), maybe others, maybe most or even all of them ... but not this one.
"Lawyers are also citing several sworn witness accounts," Barnard notes. In fact the key evidence, as before the paper chase, comes from the ramblings of a few Islamist chatterboxes full of stories of regime evil. This doesn't seem to be unusual; every criminal act blamed on the regime lacks documented order that can be found. Luckily, the CIJA also has several defectors on file (perhaps the same ones presented in court?) to help fill in the very large blank spots left by the touted paperwork.
In this case, the main details come from one man with a code-name. "Ulysses" - another defector with a classical Western nickname like "Caesar" - who claims he witnessed and learned about the plot, and in great detail at that. As Barnard put it:
"Ulysses, who remains in exile, told the lawyers that the military had ordered an attack on Ms. Colvin and her colleagues as part of a broader effort — directed from the top and laid out in the documents — to track, arrest and target demonstrators, coordinators and “those who tarnish the image of Syria” by talking to journalists and other foreigners."
We'll come back to this supposed policy and what we've learned of it previously. Ulysses - not the top secret files - had several points of evidence he allegedly learned to prove they killed Colvin:
* "Syria’s powerful intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk, received information from “friendly Lebanese officials” that foreign journalists were crossing the Syrian border to reach Homs and instructed the commander of the military-security committee in the central Syrian city to “capture the journalists” and “take all necessary measures.” Ulysses said that phrase customarily “authorized killing if needed.”"
* "Syrian activists brought in Ms. Colvin and a British journalist, Paul Conroy, through a mile-long, four-foot-wide water pipe. Soon after, Ulysses said, an informant told intelligence officials that the journalists were at the activists’ media center and described its rough location."
* "Ms. Colvin issued a live report from the media center ... That, Ulysses said, allowed the government to use surveillance equipment to pinpoint the location, matching the informant’s report. He recalled the deputy head of the Computer and Signals Section of Branch 261 of the military intelligence department in Homs saying, “There was a broadcast tonight from the same location.” Then the official added: “The boss is very happy.”"
Then the following day, we're to gather, the regime figured they'd still be there and attacked. As survivor Paul Conroy described, there was shelling at a distance on one side of the media center and then the other, then again but closer and closer until they hit the center - as if to clarify it was no accident. I tend to believe that, and I don't suspect it was an accident. But it's irresponsible to ignore that the terrorists hosting them might have done it. Why not? Because they hadn't pinpointed their location in so many ways?
Now if the CIJA had their 750,000 or so pages of top-secret files, workers and software to comb through it, for several years now ... and they found some 200 pages with relevant information, mostly I guess to show who was the boss of what, but nothing directly related to the Colvin killing … it seems like no documents reflect the plot. One entirely plausible explanation is that, despite what this "Ulysses" says, there was no such order. Someone else targeted and killed Marie Colvin.
A Cited Targeting Order
At least and perhaps just one document, of the nearly 200 from the CIJA that was submitted, suggests deadly targeting of journalists.
Barnard describes the relentless shelling of "Baba Amr, a neighborhood in Homs where opposition activists had set up a media center to communicate with journalists." It's also where terrorists were abducting people, faking shelling videos, doing much unknown … but it's a place with a media center, and later Marie Colvin at that center, and it was shelled, so … this supports targeting of media.
But it gets more specific:
"One document shows how military and security forces intercepted communications between journalists and the activists" in Baba Amr, "in early 2012" (same place and close in time to the Colvin case, for what it's worth). "Intelligence officers passed on information about a journalist for Al Jazeera to a military special forces unit with the instruction, “Take the necessary measures."
As noted above, "Ulysses" says this basic phrase “authorized killing if needed.” But from the paperwork itself, without that bit of 'codebreaking' - it's not clear what those measures were - arrest, murder, arrest and torture to death, rescue from terrorist kidnappers, or other. The text likely did clarify but it didn't include kill, so the CIJA redacted the explanation, left the ambiguous quote, and presented that. If mood music could be attached, they would probably choose a few ominous notes by a string section here.
Also it must be noted some Al-Jazeera "journalists" are clearly in the same team and on message with allies holding guns, and sometimes hostages. Some of these terrorists get a camera, maybe "media training," and then get hired to provide propaganda videos Al-Jazeera and others run as news. He may have been targeted (for arrest, probably) not over his reporting, of facts or lies, but over his violent or criminal activities, or just for questioning, to find out where the bases and hostages are, perhaps.
Still, it seems no such orders relating to Ms. Colvin and her associates was located. They're limited to showing how there's at least one possible precedent - depending on those unclear details.
The CCMC Targeting Backdrop
But they had more color to share. "Ulysses" cites a clear pattern, which he includes Colvin in, by which the regime would, as Barnard put it, "track, arrest and target demonstrators, coordinators and “those who tarnish the image of Syria” by talking to journalists and other foreigners."
That 'tarnish" quote suggests he's referring to the CIJA's files on the August, 2011 creation of a Central Crisis Management Cell in Damascus. I've covered this previously in what could be called my linchpin article so far, run proudly at 21st Century Wire. The files describing this body became the "linchpin" of the CIJA case against Syrian officials, explaining who was in charge of what, allowing for a list of names. It was said the plan was to round up protesters for nothing more, and to do so in an organized way. The "crisis" was just one of free speech, and all the soldiers and policemen getting killed by foreign-backed militants (including in Hama just a few days before the CCMC's first meeting) was not even an issue.
But the only view we get of the actual document - thanks to a slip by the editors at El-Pais English - shows their names are all over a plan to stop "armed gangs" from some of these crimes, which they are known to have been engaged in at the time:
* "vandalism”
* “looting”
* “pillaging”
* “attacking state institutions”
* “killing and terrorizing citizens.”
These are the wanted people, in the CCMC's outlined plans. The orders are to "arrest them." Then, the document continues, some among those militants also "tarnish/harm the image of Syria" by speaking to the foreign media. The orders are to arrest them, especially. It's not mentioned here, but the government position (supported by much evidence) is these people speak to the media falsely, denying any militancy on their own side to help blame their own crimes on the government. That's not free speech, but part of a criminal operation. That's the government view; militants who also spread lies in the media were wanted as the especially dangerous class they are.
Folks who organize protests were also mentioned as targets. Indeed, "demonstrations/events" and related words appear in the apparently real orders we can finally see, but their meaning here seems a bit different than usual. These "demonstrations" are organized by militants, and involved funding and "armaments," the sources of which Damascus wanted to know. Further, any militants involved in these activities via the Local Coordinating Committees was especially wanted for arrest and questioning.
It seems "Ulysses" still finds the fake version of this policy and that 'tarnish' quote central to showing how the regime went around killing journalists. But in reality, that's attached to the anti-militant policy described above. How does a well-informed insider miss such details? I propose he does it on purpose, to further the information Jihad.
As Barnard explains, the CIJA documents filed for the Colvin case "appear to reveal the workings of the Central Crisis Management Cell, a committee reporting to Mr. Assad that was created to counter the uprisings that broke out across Syria in 2011." This, minus its crucial militant context, is central to the false picture painted in court, as it has been in the court of public opinion previously.
The skewed view of "Ulysses" was borne out here, not by other documents, but by two more defectors Barnard spoke with, and who were called on in the Colvin case.
The original smuggler of the CCMC documents, Abdelmajid Barakat "said he heard discussions of plans to fabricate evidence of rebels attacking civilians." There's been no mention of any documents relating to such plans. Could this be idle talk, or invented talk? Yes, the latter in particular. But it was taken as real talk, and a real plan that was acted on.
The same guy says he "saw documents that identified Syrians providing information to journalists as a top national security threat demanding a lethal response." But he only provided documents like the ones discussed above, with no mention of that on paper yet. The ones we can see only say "arrest them." If they were to shoot back during the attempt, they may get a lethal response, but that's a bit past speaking to journalists, right? Others have found these orders central, apparently failing to find anything juicier ... like the files Barakat could only recall seeing. False recall perhaps?
Anwar Malek, an Algerian who had been part of an Arab League monitoring mission, says Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, President Assad’s brother-in-law, and a member of the CCMC, told him openly that, as Barnard put it:
"...it was necessary to kill civilians to defeat “the terrorists,” that “he would have been able to destroy Baba Amr in 10 minutes if there were not any video cameras” and that foreign journalists reporting from Baba Amr were “agents” of Israel and other countries... "‘For us, these are terrorists,’” Mr. Malek quoted him as saying. “They are targets for our military services and our security forces.”
I highly doubt this is how the conversation truly went. According to Barnard's article, Malek is sure a 5-year-old boy was really killed by a regime sniper, and felt the Arab League mission was compromised for rejecting that claim, so he quit. He says he got death threat phone calls, "and his convoy to Damascus was shot at. The government blamed rebels, but Mr. Malek believed the attack was staged by the government." Sure he believes that. I mean, it only makes sense … to certain people. He's quick to believe every Islamist claim. He's characteristic of every selected source run by the corporate-controlled media-government system to explain the "truth" about Syria. It's supposed to be a big deal that he agrees with the others in his general tone.
And still, he didn't apparently have any specific information on the Marie Colvin case. Nor did Mr. Barakat, nor the "Assad Files." Just "Ulysses" did.
Conclusion
So there's the evidence against the regime in the Colvin case, from this best effort to make it seem convincing. It's not very convincing. Mr. Malek especially was there to provide the color, or mood music, to help conjure belief in a crime for which there seems to be no reliable evidence.
The "Assad Files" were there to make it seem like top-secret papers agree with these handy omniscient defectors, all reflecting a real government policy. But the documents, which seem to reflect reality, call these liars out. They don't work well on the same team.
Which part should be demoted? If "justice" over all these alleged crimes is your interest, clearly it's the reality-reflecting "Assad Files" you'll want to lose. And they already do, for the most part. They skip over hundreds of thousands of pages entirely, to focus on a select few, used simply as pools from which to extract spooky-sounding quotes, and the names of people they want to see in jail, ignoring or deleting all the context they need to achieve that.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Assad Files-Caesar Photo Line-Ups: Genuine or Phony?
Assad Files 2018, part 4
Caesar Photo Line-Ups: Genuine or Phony?
October 14, 2018
(slightly rough)
Intro/Summary
In general, I've found these damning documents the "Assad Files" to be innocuous records of a government's response to the terrorist proxy war called the Syrian uprising. And that's upon careful review of the best examples provided by those trying to convince us of their value in proving regime atrocities. But in part 1 of this 2018 series, I was thrown for a bit of a loop by a relatively strong-seeming 2-point pattern. Two apparent line-up between detainees who died and bodies photographed at the right time among the Caesar photos - both detainees of MI (military intelligence) branch 227, both matching roughly for date with photo of alleged 227 detainees sporting the same 4-digit numbers.
It might seem impressive, but that's two cases of apparent line-up, in a narrow class (just one branch of military intelligence, in a certain 2-month span), between an enormous set of photos with sub-numbers, and a pool of dead prisoners of a less certain size (allegedly the same thousands in the photos, but maybe just a relative handful of different people). Far below is a section to explain the scale of numbers of likelihood of random line-ups.
It's presumed these two cases are just examples out of thousands of the same kind of paperwork-to-photo matches we'd expect if the stories of mass prisoner extermination were true. But it might be there are just these 2, or just a few more than that, which would mean almost nothing but chance can be at work.
For now and maybe forever, we cannot settle that with certainty. But with a little more analysis requiring this new post, I'm less impressed than I was at first. I still can't be certain what the truth here is, or prove anything, but I'll make the case that this might have been another carefully-framed illusion.
First, a visual summary of my timeline analysis suggesting a mismatch. In the graphic below are the alleged 2 matches (each with photo and linked memo, all in more detail below).
The green boxes here are what should line up, if these are the same men, and my photo date estimate, and understanding of collection dates are right. None of that is certain. I think this all refers to 4 men, not 2. But I can only offer a suggestion of mismatch, far from definitive. The rest of this post mainly explains how I decided this, and raises some notes on the way, adding up to some decent basis to doubt the matches.
Below is long, will take a while to clean-up fully. No one probably should read this end-to-end. But it can be skimmed, and should be by some people. It's organized so:
- first each detainee / pair / alleged match is explained with a section: basics and some case details considered, emphasis on timeline match (many numbers, averages, estimations involved)
- then my theory about how there may be 2 different number systems that happened to almost line-up and match pace for this 2 month span to explain both cases.
- then some related concluding thoughts, especially on how these alleged line-ups clash with an earlier explanation offered by "Caesar" himself.
Detainee(s)2040
Deceased Detainee 2040/0
We'll start with the earlier of the two apparent matches, not explained much previously. He enters the record via a document shown by Human Rights Watch in their December, 2015 report If the Dead Could Speak. There it's shared in photographed form (atop a portrait of Bashar al-Assad) and marked © 2013 “Caesar” collection. The summary of its content, as given there:
A note from the head of the 227 Branch noting: “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 ‘2040.’ 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.
In the report, they cite a total of three such documents they were shown, all three claiming heart or breathing failure as cause of death. Of course, three isn't very many to support the claim this is used to explain thousands of deliberate murders. But it is consistent with such a system, and might just be a tiny sampling. Of those three reports, only this one is shown to be verified.
Here's the full letter, cropped from the photo, enhanced and sharpened, with minor redactions added (black boxes). In the spirit of hiding the victim's name (the only thing blurred out in the original), I blacked out also his mother's name, and possible identification numbers, all in the first paragraph. We couldn't do much with this information right now anyway. Translation etc. in more detail at ACLOS posting.
In short, HRW's translation was accurate enough, and didn't seem to skip anything relevant, except that he was stored "under the number 2040/0." They missed the zero, which is easy to do.
It's dated 9 June. It requests photography and then burial of the body "in a known place," in accordance with cited codes. "Attachment: A Sealed envelope with the ID of the Mentioned person" Official-seeming stamp, and Amin 2511 notes "signed by the head of section/branch 227 also Head of the Intelligence Division "per procuration""
This document doesn't offer an obvious problem. It sounds like that is a detainee of theirs, and with all text present it's clearly the same man who dies after problems during an "investigation with him." But there's no mention of torture as the cause. If it did happen they took care not to mention it, even in this top-secret internal memo.
So for whatever reason, they say he died on the 2nd, and exactly a week later, on the 9th, the order is put out to photograph and bury him. There's one other to compare it to (see below), and he's held 6 days. Why wait a week to bury your secret detainees? Maybe they have a policy of waiting a week to try and contact family and get the body back to them. Maybe if there's no luck after that, they document and bury the guy. If so, all such cases should be 7 days later. So far it's just two for two.
Assessing HRW's Match With (Terrorist Hostage?) "227-2040" In their report, Human Rights Watch matches the deceased detainee with a "Caesar photo" victim labeled 227-2040. That's reasonable, in that the he's the only option if one were to find an exact match in the photos, for the 227 part and/or for the basic date. But the match is not certain, maybe because the photos simply don't show detainees in actual Syrian security centers, but someone else's prisoners.
Here is the person they refer to as the same one in that memo. SAFMCD cropped face-shot (a bit blurry) - 227-2040 (3) 7-6-2013. This is just one of the several better photos HRW will have seen (cropped from #3 in a sequence of however many).
Age: born 1976 as the memo says, so the detainee 2040/0 would be 36 or 37 in mid-2013. That could be the age of this man who - as usual - is in bad shape and hard to read. Many will look older than they really are, and some people started out looking young for their age. Totally inconclusive.
I notice his eyes are sunken, and teeth are in bad shape, maybe missing some. These are consistent with malnutrition seen in most photo victims. His face and shoulders don't evidence much wasting, but we don't see his ribs or hips, and he still may have been poorly fed, just for a shorter time than some, or with peculiar effects. It's alleged branch 227 and the rest starve most detainees...
HRW: "His body shows purple bruising in the throat, abdomen and lower legs, cuts on his lower legs, and a cut on his forehead."
I can't see a cut on the forehead, but maybe it's too high up. Lower body details unknown. As for the purple neck bruising, he may show a different and milder form of some common neck injury - bruising/burning/unclear, worth more study. But mostly rather, his body shows a purple tint all over in the parts we see, and likely the rest. The lips especially are deep purple. That means cyanosis, from prolonged lack of oxygen in the blood. Most of the victims in the "Caesar photos" display this to some degree, and often to the extreme. It's not something "torture" usually causes.
Anyway, we refer to the same person here, but we don't agree that he's the same man described in the memo. I don't suppose I can prove this, but …
Date Mismatch?
HRW's report stated "Photographs of Detainee 2040 reveal that his body was photographed on June 7, 2013." If so, then why is an order to take the photo only issued on June 9?
Rather, the photos they identified as relevant were put in a folder dated June 7 (7-6). This will usually be the date of photo collection, of photos taken earlier, since last collection. This would mean a photo taken June 9 or 10 is simply too late to be included.
But the basic logic of the system isn't totally clear yet, it seems to change at points, and might have exceptions. Here's my big timeline of seen "hospital numbers" compared to photo folder dates, for the final and heaviest 9 months (not the whole span back to 2011). (hospital number explained here - it means either false heart-attack-death-report # or, I think, unidentified found body #). This case and some others with dates are pinned on at the bottom (new window for readable-size view). I'm looking for any more dated entries I can place to help fill this in, but they're pretty rare.
See below, on the left in the span under 1-11-2012 (purple) that includes entries (allegedly) from days later than that, and many others after it. There, 1 Nov. seems like a start date for collection, in a folder named first and added to on later dates. The same seems to apply to 1-8-2012, off-frame here. But that's not well-illustrated yet, and both dates are far from gospel.
Patterns in mid-2013 will be more relevant, and it seems like the MO changed somewhere before that. The same Dec. HRW report shows a May 24 order to photograph 11 bodies that came out as numbered 2614/b-2624/b on this timeline. As we can see here, a whole lot of bodies dated June 4 (about 1,800-1,900) were photographed before that, running back - it seems - to March, when the last folder was compiled. It should probably run up to the collection date, including photo taken on or just before 4 June - unless perhaps the gathering session was cut short, with the last few days still to grab, for example.
So the photos put in a 7-6 folder should be gathered three days later, and cover just those three days, plus any missed before. How it seems to cover app. 250-300+ bodies suggests it might cover more than 3 days, likely including quite a few entries from June 4 and earlier, because the last session was not completely current.
But more than likely, 7-6 brought things current, and none of the photos in it was taken after the 7th. Anyone snapped on the 9th or 10th would then have to wait for the sizeable 24-6 folder, the next one compiled. So, just by the apparent logic of folder dates, the provided "Caesar" photo was taken some days too early to match with that memo.
There's another even less certain way to check for a likely date. I estimate 227-2040's hospital number at around 3000/b (proportionally between the two closest 227 bodies with seen H#s, and presuming an even distribution of 227-stamped bodies). That would be in the middle of the smaller 7-6 folder's span (whatever days that actually ran).
With an overall average of 33 bodies a day, some 350-400 bodies before 3,000/b = 10-12 days after the May 24 memo, or June 4-6 is the most likely span for the 227 photo - 3-5 days too early to match with the June 9 memo. But this remains uncertain, not a very reliable estimate (but better than nothing, at least). Maybe the rate here was slower, or this folder was added to after its start date so it's a match. But suggested line-up and the apparent logic of folder dates agree in their uncertain indication that the memo comes a bit too late to match the photo.
That would present this coincidence: 2 different dead men wound up stamped 2040, at Hospital 601, within a few days of each other. That might sound unlikely on first blush, but see below for the scale of things to realize it's not so unlikely at all.
The Other Case: Detainee(s) 2668
2668/0 = (Terrorist Hostage?) "227-2668'?
Another case from two months later was covered in more detail in part 1. It was published by the CIJA (Committee for International Justice and Accountability) via an August, 2018 Channel 4 program. The relevant document they shared has very similar content. In this case, a "terrorist" detainee (different wording) of branch 227, is most likely the "he" who died of heart and breathing failure at hospital 601, after questioning. There's some ambiguity from 95% of the text preceding "he" being redacted (whoever was referred to last in that black box). But comparing to this earlier case, it's likely the same story, maybe with some extra details not worth seeing on just how this bad state finally came about.
It says he died on July 31,and was ordered photographed and buried in an August 6 report. In between, he was put in the cooler with a number 2668/0. That (minus the zero) was matched by Channel 4 investigators with a starved guy with eyes gouged out, 227-2668, date not clear but (as I found) pretty current with the memo. That's two cases where 227's numbers ate least are current with two dead detainees - are they just the same thing then?
To me it seemed likely the dead man was another character introduced, one of the mostly-dead people dumped by the terrorist, one of whom was caught in the act and became the "terrorist" under questioning. Maybe one dumped body still had a pulse, but then died in this hospital, and was documented as unidentified. But the 2040 case weakens that option - a dead 227 detainee with the same kind of number has details, an ID card, he clearly dies, still gets held a week, and processed the same way. Most logical; the same story happened twice.
This memo is clearly a different format, some kind of fax, not the stamped official form seen for 2040. The requested forwarding is similar for both, but not exact: 2040's form in June is forward to: division/branch 291 (in "reference to your letter No. 56122 dated 7/6/2013, for view"), 248, 294. This one has: something 248, 294, 217, and a shorter entry blacked out. (291?)
As with the first case, there's a delay here - not 7 days, but 6. So maybe the rule is try to contact his family for about a week, then document and bury the body, or to get the whole thing done within a week.
So if this all refers to one man - there he was under questioning, already weak from starvation, and they gouged his eyes out … and if the blacked out parts explained any of this, it would be odd to black it out. In this case, there's no purple, coughing blood and mucous, or any other chemical signs. That all remains super-common from Nov. 2012 on, but becomes less common in the final stretch. Instead, eye-gouging appears suddenly with most victims, closer to the end in mid-August 2013.
But anyway, they then rush his to the ER as if to keep him alive? And he wound up displaying no signs of medical intervention, like washing the wounded eyes, etc.?
There are hundreds in this span with eyes gouged out. It looks extermination-oriented, but maybe it was a whole lot of interrogations gone overboard, like with this guy? No, I doubt that - for the rest and for him.
Time Mismatch?
Aug. 6 order, photo presumably that day or the next, compared to folder 000. That's not obvious. But I can say 000 is somewhere between July 27 and what seems to be a folder dated August 6 (just called 6, but containing body numbers running up to those in a final 14-8-2013 folder, so I take it as meaning 6-8, or Aug. 6). The folder sizes here (from my hard-to-assemble and 99% complete database):
When was 000? Considering just 62 photo gathered on 6-8, that's like 2 days worth of bodies in the usual flow. So the last collection (000) might be about August 4. Otherwise, right between the dated folders makes most sense. That would be August 1 or so. 000 by usual rates = 4-5 days' worth of bodies. From July 27/28, that should be Aug. 1. Some implied entries missing photos are mixed in somewhere... So we could say best estimate for 000 is Aug. 2-3, give or take a day or so.
Best single-day guess: photo on July 31. As usual, he appears dead perhaps 1-2 days at most, or longer if under refrigeration. Now, to be the body in that memo, he has to die on the 31st and only pass under the lens 6-7 days later, august 6 or 7. He would have his photo collected later yet - too late for the 000 folder, and maybe even for the Aug. 6 one. He would likely end up in the final August 14 folder instead.
The date of 000 remains unclear, and if that's the date of last collection... the numbers might also line up better, or even be the same number and same man entirely, as alleged. But again, his body/ hospital number and the folder date both suggest the photo is too early to match the memo, and here by a bit longer, more like 5-6 days.
And both clues agreed in the same direction in the other case above. Hm.
Two Number Systems?
A Hypothesized /0 System
Both documents add an unmentioned /0 to the body number. It looks like a /. and coming at the end of sentence, it looks like the end of the sentence. This is a traditional "Eastern Arabic" number system commonly used in the region, with its easily-missed zero.
There's also a slash before the number, but I'm inclined to ignore that as marking a number here: it's worthwhile, as the order of reading changes at each slash. The usual right-to-left order is maintained, but within the slashes, number blocks are read left-to-right. So "number / 2040 / 0" and "number / 2668 / 0" is how it's given in both cases.
Those numbers seem to be issued in the same system, but does it really link to those men in the Caesar photos? If so, it seems 0 is the hospital's code for 227's share of the body flow, and they just use the branch's own ID number. Maybe 215 gets their dead prisoners stored with their current detainee/body number with the suffix /1, and so on. That's the implication of the CIJA case
One other option I held out from the start was two different number systems happening to line up, at least roughly. Seeing that happen twice about 2 months apart did seem a challenge, but not a great one. I've come back around to this theory as my best explanation, for now at least.
A number system that could explain the pattern under study is one for all deaths IN military hospital 601, as opposed to those special cases logged out back. It would include the occasional prisoner who dies after a struggle in the ER (not ones found dead, or meant to die), delayed combat deaths from both sides (but mainly the government side), civilians mortally killed in shelling, etc. Maybe a few are "Caesar photo" victims who were found dumped among the dead but with a faint pulse, but then died in the ER.
In all but the latter case, the number wouldn't usually replace a name, as the victims are identified or likely to be, only stored short term with bodies claimed by family, ideally. The number might just be for reference, a running death toll. It would probably refer to crisis-related and not natural deaths, starting at 1 around March 2011. (this is how the unidentified body numbers work; they start low at the conflict's start)
Why 0? Could mean detainee deaths, with others given numbers like /1 for killed civilians, /2 for killed security forces, and /3 for killed militants. /4 would probably be better for prisoners than the non-number 0. Maybe it just means hospital 601, the one that did all the counting at first (hence 0, the original0? The zero would be redundant in-house, but useful when combining the tolls at each hospital (others using the same numbers but getting suffixes /1, /2, etc.)
In such a system, body #2039 might have been a girl who died at hospital 601 after her school was hit by a terrorist mortar shell, for example. She might be 2039/1 for example, or /0, depending - but there would be just one number per body, with the right suffix (so if 2039/1, there would be no 2039/0, etc.).
I'm just hypothesizing here, but as far as I see, the speculation has to be about correct. Otherwise, it would seem the CIJA matches are genuine, despite the doubts and counter-clues and their shady track record. Everything else to me says these things do not connect, but if not, then something else would have to explain those 2 numbers emerging then, and I don't see much alternative to something like this.
How It Would Kind-Of Line Up With "Caesar's" System
So let's say this system - that really might and probably should exist - would happen to reach death number 2040, with a detainee of branch 227, at about the same time the "Caesar photos" unidentified bodies credited to branch 227 also reached 2040.
So we'd have 2040 deaths logged at hospital 601 by June 2 of 2013. The rate of deaths in that time would start slow and then accelerate as the militancy expanded. Quite likely a smaller half of these deaths were in the first half of 2013, while the slight majority took the first 22 months to accumulate. That's just a guess, but would yield a 2013 average of around 160-170 a month. It might be low in the winter, like 90/month, and extra-heavy in June and July, like 250/month, amid escalated fighting, especially over Jobar and east Ghouta.
The second coincidence about two months later (span June 9 to August 6) just means the two systems didn't happen to pass briefly, but stayed roughly synchronized for several weeks - the same basic pace was kept between the 227 bodies and everyone who died at the hospital. Their system would log 628 fatalities of all classes combined in app. 2 months (2040 - 2668), an unusually high rate of about 300-320 a month at this time. Considering the above, the uptick in deaths could be even sharper than that rough guess.
as for the "Casear photos," likely unidentified found bodies of immense number, which seem to directed totally to the garage behind Hospital 601 - In this same span, my H# timeline suggests that system documents more like (est. 3000/b - 4738/b) 1,750 unidentified bodies As it happens, the minority stamped 227 also rose by about 600 in the same 2 months (comparing 2040's estimated H# and 2668's seen H#). At close to 1/3, that's a pretty normal ratio for 227. In total, the photos at the SAFMCD site break down so by (alleged) MI branch:
* 215 = 3,556
* 227 = 2,047
* next 3:
** Air Force Intel - 350
** 216 - 297
** 235 - 128
* the other folders/branches hardly count or don't (misplaced 215s, unknown branch, etc.)
So 215 = 56% - 227 = 32% - next 3 combined = 12%
Now this, used to project the expected number and proportions of dead in the span between our two deceased detainees in the hypothesized Hospital 601 /0 number system. Nothing exact, but useful in showing the rough correlation of the red bars (est. 560 vs. 628), and likelihood of many matches here - if very many of those who died inside the hospital were 227 detainees. And it might be just the two.
The sheer number of bodies with their attached numbers makes it likely enough that two men stamped 2040 and two stamped 2667 passed through the same hospital within a few days of each other. Virtually every number prior to that had already been used in the hospital's inner system, and several times among the victims out back. The hospital number there is debatably relevant, but it too gets linked to false detainee death reports, and might be used in the same way - see below. Every number up to 5,000 gets used twice here, and a few lower numbers get used a third time (it runs 1-4,999 first plain, then again with /b, then with /another letter(unclear - s?), allegedly running up past 1,000). And then each alleged MI branch responsible for killing their prisoners on such a scale issues virtually every number up to whatever. And there are nine branches to issue numbers.
For example, over the whole span, the number 458 would be passed seven times between all sources in that graphic above. Once in the "/0 system" and six times in the "Caesar photos" system:
as unidentified body number three times, and also with photo victims 215-458, 216-458, 227-458. So there are 6 chances for the /0 system's body #458 to line up with one of those.
Lower number should be repeated more time with the lower-killing branches included, but 215 and 227 are missing a lot of lower / early entries, so the most common numbers come out at best like 59:
Branches 227, 216, 251, 220, 235, and 248 each have a "detainee" #59. 215 does not (that's included as such). These six plus 59 used 3x as body number in this system, and once in the hospital's inner system = ten bodies logged as #59, one way or another, at one point or another, just at this one place.
Other numbers like 1441 just get repeated five times total (just twice as hospital number, once each for 227 and 215, the only two huge-yield branches, and once in the /0 system). The numbers in question here (2040, 2668) are of this kind - only 5 instances. And numbers 5,000 or past are used maybe zero times. I've seen a number past 5,000 written on a card with a body once, but it seemed odd, out-of-place, and everything else says they stop just before that and re-start with a new letter suffix for body numbers, and no other system is seen ticking that high. 215's detainee/body numbers stop in the low 4,000s, and everyone else's stop far lower than that (except the stray, misplaced-seeming high numbers found here and there).
Usually, the 4-9 outer repetitions of a given number won't come close at all to lining up, on the calendar, with the same number on the one system running inside the hospital. But with that many systems running at once, it's likely at least 2, and even "several" cases will. They probably wouldn't line up down to the day, but close enough to explain the two cases of possible or near-matches we've seen. And so I propose something very much like this does in fact explain it.
The later case is said to be just one of at least "several" shown the Channel 4, each with "matching Caesar photos." How well these others matched is unclear. As noted, every number from 1 to whatever was used 5-10 times here, so it means nothing that they found a matching number in several cases. If their interpretation is right, there should be thousands of these matches, all being number AND date matches. But maybe all but 2 or 3 of these "several" are just some random rare detainee death that has a best of 1-3 matches in the photo set, but the dates don't even come close to matching, so the CIJA don't give out any details, even to Channel 4
As shown, that "several" might be the few sheets on top of some binder, or maybe the whole binder as well - that's unclear. The two we see (one presumably being the one included on the show) are both 95% redacted.
Caesar Photo Line-Ups: Genuine or Phony?
October 14, 2018
(slightly rough)
Intro/Summary
In general, I've found these damning documents the "Assad Files" to be innocuous records of a government's response to the terrorist proxy war called the Syrian uprising. And that's upon careful review of the best examples provided by those trying to convince us of their value in proving regime atrocities. But in part 1 of this 2018 series, I was thrown for a bit of a loop by a relatively strong-seeming 2-point pattern. Two apparent line-up between detainees who died and bodies photographed at the right time among the Caesar photos - both detainees of MI (military intelligence) branch 227, both matching roughly for date with photo of alleged 227 detainees sporting the same 4-digit numbers.
It might seem impressive, but that's two cases of apparent line-up, in a narrow class (just one branch of military intelligence, in a certain 2-month span), between an enormous set of photos with sub-numbers, and a pool of dead prisoners of a less certain size (allegedly the same thousands in the photos, but maybe just a relative handful of different people). Far below is a section to explain the scale of numbers of likelihood of random line-ups.
It's presumed these two cases are just examples out of thousands of the same kind of paperwork-to-photo matches we'd expect if the stories of mass prisoner extermination were true. But it might be there are just these 2, or just a few more than that, which would mean almost nothing but chance can be at work.
For now and maybe forever, we cannot settle that with certainty. But with a little more analysis requiring this new post, I'm less impressed than I was at first. I still can't be certain what the truth here is, or prove anything, but I'll make the case that this might have been another carefully-framed illusion.
First, a visual summary of my timeline analysis suggesting a mismatch. In the graphic below are the alleged 2 matches (each with photo and linked memo, all in more detail below).
The green boxes here are what should line up, if these are the same men, and my photo date estimate, and understanding of collection dates are right. None of that is certain. I think this all refers to 4 men, not 2. But I can only offer a suggestion of mismatch, far from definitive. The rest of this post mainly explains how I decided this, and raises some notes on the way, adding up to some decent basis to doubt the matches.
Below is long, will take a while to clean-up fully. No one probably should read this end-to-end. But it can be skimmed, and should be by some people. It's organized so:
- first each detainee / pair / alleged match is explained with a section: basics and some case details considered, emphasis on timeline match (many numbers, averages, estimations involved)
- then my theory about how there may be 2 different number systems that happened to almost line-up and match pace for this 2 month span to explain both cases.
- then some related concluding thoughts, especially on how these alleged line-ups clash with an earlier explanation offered by "Caesar" himself.
Detainee(s)2040
Deceased Detainee 2040/0
We'll start with the earlier of the two apparent matches, not explained much previously. He enters the record via a document shown by Human Rights Watch in their December, 2015 report If the Dead Could Speak. There it's shared in photographed form (atop a portrait of Bashar al-Assad) and marked © 2013 “Caesar” collection. The summary of its content, as given there:
A note from the head of the 227 Branch noting: “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 ‘2040.’ 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.
In the report, they cite a total of three such documents they were shown, all three claiming heart or breathing failure as cause of death. Of course, three isn't very many to support the claim this is used to explain thousands of deliberate murders. But it is consistent with such a system, and might just be a tiny sampling. Of those three reports, only this one is shown to be verified.
In short, HRW's translation was accurate enough, and didn't seem to skip anything relevant, except that he was stored "under the number 2040/0." They missed the zero, which is easy to do.
It's dated 9 June. It requests photography and then burial of the body "in a known place," in accordance with cited codes. "Attachment: A Sealed envelope with the ID of the Mentioned person" Official-seeming stamp, and Amin 2511 notes "signed by the head of section/branch 227 also Head of the Intelligence Division "per procuration""
This document doesn't offer an obvious problem. It sounds like that is a detainee of theirs, and with all text present it's clearly the same man who dies after problems during an "investigation with him." But there's no mention of torture as the cause. If it did happen they took care not to mention it, even in this top-secret internal memo.
So for whatever reason, they say he died on the 2nd, and exactly a week later, on the 9th, the order is put out to photograph and bury him. There's one other to compare it to (see below), and he's held 6 days. Why wait a week to bury your secret detainees? Maybe they have a policy of waiting a week to try and contact family and get the body back to them. Maybe if there's no luck after that, they document and bury the guy. If so, all such cases should be 7 days later. So far it's just two for two.
Assessing HRW's Match With (Terrorist Hostage?) "227-2040" In their report, Human Rights Watch matches the deceased detainee with a "Caesar photo" victim labeled 227-2040. That's reasonable, in that the he's the only option if one were to find an exact match in the photos, for the 227 part and/or for the basic date. But the match is not certain, maybe because the photos simply don't show detainees in actual Syrian security centers, but someone else's prisoners.
Age: born 1976 as the memo says, so the detainee 2040/0 would be 36 or 37 in mid-2013. That could be the age of this man who - as usual - is in bad shape and hard to read. Many will look older than they really are, and some people started out looking young for their age. Totally inconclusive.
I notice his eyes are sunken, and teeth are in bad shape, maybe missing some. These are consistent with malnutrition seen in most photo victims. His face and shoulders don't evidence much wasting, but we don't see his ribs or hips, and he still may have been poorly fed, just for a shorter time than some, or with peculiar effects. It's alleged branch 227 and the rest starve most detainees...
HRW: "His body shows purple bruising in the throat, abdomen and lower legs, cuts on his lower legs, and a cut on his forehead."
I can't see a cut on the forehead, but maybe it's too high up. Lower body details unknown. As for the purple neck bruising, he may show a different and milder form of some common neck injury - bruising/burning/unclear, worth more study. But mostly rather, his body shows a purple tint all over in the parts we see, and likely the rest. The lips especially are deep purple. That means cyanosis, from prolonged lack of oxygen in the blood. Most of the victims in the "Caesar photos" display this to some degree, and often to the extreme. It's not something "torture" usually causes.
Anyway, we refer to the same person here, but we don't agree that he's the same man described in the memo. I don't suppose I can prove this, but …
Date Mismatch?
HRW's report stated "Photographs of Detainee 2040 reveal that his body was photographed on June 7, 2013." If so, then why is an order to take the photo only issued on June 9?
Rather, the photos they identified as relevant were put in a folder dated June 7 (7-6). This will usually be the date of photo collection, of photos taken earlier, since last collection. This would mean a photo taken June 9 or 10 is simply too late to be included.
But the basic logic of the system isn't totally clear yet, it seems to change at points, and might have exceptions. Here's my big timeline of seen "hospital numbers" compared to photo folder dates, for the final and heaviest 9 months (not the whole span back to 2011). (hospital number explained here - it means either false heart-attack-death-report # or, I think, unidentified found body #). This case and some others with dates are pinned on at the bottom (new window for readable-size view). I'm looking for any more dated entries I can place to help fill this in, but they're pretty rare.
See below, on the left in the span under 1-11-2012 (purple) that includes entries (allegedly) from days later than that, and many others after it. There, 1 Nov. seems like a start date for collection, in a folder named first and added to on later dates. The same seems to apply to 1-8-2012, off-frame here. But that's not well-illustrated yet, and both dates are far from gospel.
Patterns in mid-2013 will be more relevant, and it seems like the MO changed somewhere before that. The same Dec. HRW report shows a May 24 order to photograph 11 bodies that came out as numbered 2614/b-2624/b on this timeline. As we can see here, a whole lot of bodies dated June 4 (about 1,800-1,900) were photographed before that, running back - it seems - to March, when the last folder was compiled. It should probably run up to the collection date, including photo taken on or just before 4 June - unless perhaps the gathering session was cut short, with the last few days still to grab, for example.
So the photos put in a 7-6 folder should be gathered three days later, and cover just those three days, plus any missed before. How it seems to cover app. 250-300+ bodies suggests it might cover more than 3 days, likely including quite a few entries from June 4 and earlier, because the last session was not completely current.
But more than likely, 7-6 brought things current, and none of the photos in it was taken after the 7th. Anyone snapped on the 9th or 10th would then have to wait for the sizeable 24-6 folder, the next one compiled. So, just by the apparent logic of folder dates, the provided "Caesar" photo was taken some days too early to match with that memo.
There's another even less certain way to check for a likely date. I estimate 227-2040's hospital number at around 3000/b (proportionally between the two closest 227 bodies with seen H#s, and presuming an even distribution of 227-stamped bodies). That would be in the middle of the smaller 7-6 folder's span (whatever days that actually ran).
With an overall average of 33 bodies a day, some 350-400 bodies before 3,000/b = 10-12 days after the May 24 memo, or June 4-6 is the most likely span for the 227 photo - 3-5 days too early to match with the June 9 memo. But this remains uncertain, not a very reliable estimate (but better than nothing, at least). Maybe the rate here was slower, or this folder was added to after its start date so it's a match. But suggested line-up and the apparent logic of folder dates agree in their uncertain indication that the memo comes a bit too late to match the photo.
That would present this coincidence: 2 different dead men wound up stamped 2040, at Hospital 601, within a few days of each other. That might sound unlikely on first blush, but see below for the scale of things to realize it's not so unlikely at all.
The Other Case: Detainee(s) 2668
Another case from two months later was covered in more detail in part 1. It was published by the CIJA (Committee for International Justice and Accountability) via an August, 2018 Channel 4 program. The relevant document they shared has very similar content. In this case, a "terrorist" detainee (different wording) of branch 227, is most likely the "he" who died of heart and breathing failure at hospital 601, after questioning. There's some ambiguity from 95% of the text preceding "he" being redacted (whoever was referred to last in that black box). But comparing to this earlier case, it's likely the same story, maybe with some extra details not worth seeing on just how this bad state finally came about.
It says he died on July 31,and was ordered photographed and buried in an August 6 report. In between, he was put in the cooler with a number 2668/0. That (minus the zero) was matched by Channel 4 investigators with a starved guy with eyes gouged out, 227-2668, date not clear but (as I found) pretty current with the memo. That's two cases where 227's numbers ate least are current with two dead detainees - are they just the same thing then?
To me it seemed likely the dead man was another character introduced, one of the mostly-dead people dumped by the terrorist, one of whom was caught in the act and became the "terrorist" under questioning. Maybe one dumped body still had a pulse, but then died in this hospital, and was documented as unidentified. But the 2040 case weakens that option - a dead 227 detainee with the same kind of number has details, an ID card, he clearly dies, still gets held a week, and processed the same way. Most logical; the same story happened twice.
This memo is clearly a different format, some kind of fax, not the stamped official form seen for 2040. The requested forwarding is similar for both, but not exact: 2040's form in June is forward to: division/branch 291 (in "reference to your letter No. 56122 dated 7/6/2013, for view"), 248, 294. This one has: something 248, 294, 217, and a shorter entry blacked out. (291?)
As with the first case, there's a delay here - not 7 days, but 6. So maybe the rule is try to contact his family for about a week, then document and bury the body, or to get the whole thing done within a week.
So if this all refers to one man - there he was under questioning, already weak from starvation, and they gouged his eyes out … and if the blacked out parts explained any of this, it would be odd to black it out. In this case, there's no purple, coughing blood and mucous, or any other chemical signs. That all remains super-common from Nov. 2012 on, but becomes less common in the final stretch. Instead, eye-gouging appears suddenly with most victims, closer to the end in mid-August 2013.
But anyway, they then rush his to the ER as if to keep him alive? And he wound up displaying no signs of medical intervention, like washing the wounded eyes, etc.?
There are hundreds in this span with eyes gouged out. It looks extermination-oriented, but maybe it was a whole lot of interrogations gone overboard, like with this guy? No, I doubt that - for the rest and for him.
Time Mismatch?
Aug. 6 order, photo presumably that day or the next, compared to folder 000. That's not obvious. But I can say 000 is somewhere between July 27 and what seems to be a folder dated August 6 (just called 6, but containing body numbers running up to those in a final 14-8-2013 folder, so I take it as meaning 6-8, or Aug. 6). The folder sizes here (from my hard-to-assemble and 99% complete database):
- 000 = 143 photos
- 6(-8) = 62 photos
- 14-8 = 126 photos.
He comes just another entry that's in Aug. 6, so late in his span of 143.
Best single-day guess: photo on July 31. As usual, he appears dead perhaps 1-2 days at most, or longer if under refrigeration. Now, to be the body in that memo, he has to die on the 31st and only pass under the lens 6-7 days later, august 6 or 7. He would have his photo collected later yet - too late for the 000 folder, and maybe even for the Aug. 6 one. He would likely end up in the final August 14 folder instead.
The date of 000 remains unclear, and if that's the date of last collection... the numbers might also line up better, or even be the same number and same man entirely, as alleged. But again, his body/ hospital number and the folder date both suggest the photo is too early to match the memo, and here by a bit longer, more like 5-6 days.
And both clues agreed in the same direction in the other case above. Hm.
Two Number Systems?
Both documents add an unmentioned /0 to the body number. It looks like a /. and coming at the end of sentence, it looks like the end of the sentence. This is a traditional "Eastern Arabic" number system commonly used in the region, with its easily-missed zero.
There's also a slash before the number, but I'm inclined to ignore that as marking a number here: it's worthwhile, as the order of reading changes at each slash. The usual right-to-left order is maintained, but within the slashes, number blocks are read left-to-right. So "number / 2040 / 0" and "number / 2668 / 0" is how it's given in both cases.
Those numbers seem to be issued in the same system, but does it really link to those men in the Caesar photos? If so, it seems 0 is the hospital's code for 227's share of the body flow, and they just use the branch's own ID number. Maybe 215 gets their dead prisoners stored with their current detainee/body number with the suffix /1, and so on. That's the implication of the CIJA case
One other option I held out from the start was two different number systems happening to line up, at least roughly. Seeing that happen twice about 2 months apart did seem a challenge, but not a great one. I've come back around to this theory as my best explanation, for now at least.
A number system that could explain the pattern under study is one for all deaths IN military hospital 601, as opposed to those special cases logged out back. It would include the occasional prisoner who dies after a struggle in the ER (not ones found dead, or meant to die), delayed combat deaths from both sides (but mainly the government side), civilians mortally killed in shelling, etc. Maybe a few are "Caesar photo" victims who were found dumped among the dead but with a faint pulse, but then died in the ER.
In all but the latter case, the number wouldn't usually replace a name, as the victims are identified or likely to be, only stored short term with bodies claimed by family, ideally. The number might just be for reference, a running death toll. It would probably refer to crisis-related and not natural deaths, starting at 1 around March 2011. (this is how the unidentified body numbers work; they start low at the conflict's start)
Why 0? Could mean detainee deaths, with others given numbers like /1 for killed civilians, /2 for killed security forces, and /3 for killed militants. /4 would probably be better for prisoners than the non-number 0. Maybe it just means hospital 601, the one that did all the counting at first (hence 0, the original0? The zero would be redundant in-house, but useful when combining the tolls at each hospital (others using the same numbers but getting suffixes /1, /2, etc.)
In such a system, body #2039 might have been a girl who died at hospital 601 after her school was hit by a terrorist mortar shell, for example. She might be 2039/1 for example, or /0, depending - but there would be just one number per body, with the right suffix (so if 2039/1, there would be no 2039/0, etc.).
I'm just hypothesizing here, but as far as I see, the speculation has to be about correct. Otherwise, it would seem the CIJA matches are genuine, despite the doubts and counter-clues and their shady track record. Everything else to me says these things do not connect, but if not, then something else would have to explain those 2 numbers emerging then, and I don't see much alternative to something like this.
How It Would Kind-Of Line Up With "Caesar's" System
So let's say this system - that really might and probably should exist - would happen to reach death number 2040, with a detainee of branch 227, at about the same time the "Caesar photos" unidentified bodies credited to branch 227 also reached 2040.
So we'd have 2040 deaths logged at hospital 601 by June 2 of 2013. The rate of deaths in that time would start slow and then accelerate as the militancy expanded. Quite likely a smaller half of these deaths were in the first half of 2013, while the slight majority took the first 22 months to accumulate. That's just a guess, but would yield a 2013 average of around 160-170 a month. It might be low in the winter, like 90/month, and extra-heavy in June and July, like 250/month, amid escalated fighting, especially over Jobar and east Ghouta.
The second coincidence about two months later (span June 9 to August 6) just means the two systems didn't happen to pass briefly, but stayed roughly synchronized for several weeks - the same basic pace was kept between the 227 bodies and everyone who died at the hospital. Their system would log 628 fatalities of all classes combined in app. 2 months (2040 - 2668), an unusually high rate of about 300-320 a month at this time. Considering the above, the uptick in deaths could be even sharper than that rough guess.
as for the "Casear photos," likely unidentified found bodies of immense number, which seem to directed totally to the garage behind Hospital 601 - In this same span, my H# timeline suggests that system documents more like (est. 3000/b - 4738/b) 1,750 unidentified bodies As it happens, the minority stamped 227 also rose by about 600 in the same 2 months (comparing 2040's estimated H# and 2668's seen H#). At close to 1/3, that's a pretty normal ratio for 227. In total, the photos at the SAFMCD site break down so by (alleged) MI branch:
* 215 = 3,556
* 227 = 2,047
* next 3:
** Air Force Intel - 350
** 216 - 297
** 235 - 128
* the other folders/branches hardly count or don't (misplaced 215s, unknown branch, etc.)
So 215 = 56% - 227 = 32% - next 3 combined = 12%
Now this, used to project the expected number and proportions of dead in the span between our two deceased detainees in the hypothesized Hospital 601 /0 number system. Nothing exact, but useful in showing the rough correlation of the red bars (est. 560 vs. 628), and likelihood of many matches here - if very many of those who died inside the hospital were 227 detainees. And it might be just the two.
Both photos seeming to come too early to match suggests the hospital's system of total deaths passed the current 227 number just a few days behind it, and kept approximate pace for about two months, staying about as far behind then. Therefore, it would keep pace for a bit before and after this span as well, but would get increasingly out of sync further from this zone..
Here it seems the hospital's number grew faster (628 to 560), so the second entry should line up better, but things just aren't precise enough yet on any end to settle points like that. Likely there are more 227s than average in this span. In fact:
The 7-6 folder includes 160 from 227, and only 73 from branch 215, of 256 total. The other folders are less 227 heavy or have none, but tend higher than average.
24-6 folder, total: 544, includes: 215: 267 - 227: 213
7-7 folder, total 439, includes: 215: 279 - 227: 117
26-7 , total 218, includes: 215: 78 - 227 = 106
later 000 (Aug. 1?) folder, total 143, includes: 215: 0 - 227: 117
6(-8)-2013, total 62, includes: 215: 62 - 227: 0?
14-8-2013, total 126, includes: 215: 55 - 227: 45
The two prisoners who die happen to be 227 - in two cases, maybe more. Is that a lucky break? (and how lucky?) Or, perhaps, 215 and someone else had a couple detainees die in this span as well, but they were put in the hospital's cooler under numbers in the same sequence with these 227 guys and whoever else, and NOT based on their branch 215 etc. ID. That is, maybe others were found but didn't line up, so the CIJA et al. didn't mention it... this would be par for the course if those investicutors (prosecution-minded fake investigators) did find such a thing.
If this scenario were true, it means compared to the large number of people dying in hospital 601 in this span - a bit over 300 a month on average, from all causes combined as I propose - three times as many starved and purple found bodies were photographed in the garage area during the same span. And it did this constantly through late 2012 and 2013, to the tune of about 1,000/month on average. Whatever crime system is behind that stream of death, this gives an idea of the scale of it.Here it seems the hospital's number grew faster (628 to 560), so the second entry should line up better, but things just aren't precise enough yet on any end to settle points like that. Likely there are more 227s than average in this span. In fact:
The 7-6 folder includes 160 from 227, and only 73 from branch 215, of 256 total. The other folders are less 227 heavy or have none, but tend higher than average.
24-6 folder, total: 544, includes: 215: 267 - 227: 213
7-7 folder, total 439, includes: 215: 279 - 227: 117
26-7 , total 218, includes: 215: 78 - 227 = 106
later 000 (Aug. 1?) folder, total 143, includes: 215: 0 - 227: 117
6(-8)-2013, total 62, includes: 215: 62 - 227: 0?
14-8-2013, total 126, includes: 215: 55 - 227: 45
The two prisoners who die happen to be 227 - in two cases, maybe more. Is that a lucky break? (and how lucky?) Or, perhaps, 215 and someone else had a couple detainees die in this span as well, but they were put in the hospital's cooler under numbers in the same sequence with these 227 guys and whoever else, and NOT based on their branch 215 etc. ID. That is, maybe others were found but didn't line up, so the CIJA et al. didn't mention it... this would be par for the course if those investicutors (prosecution-minded fake investigators) did find such a thing.
The sheer number of bodies with their attached numbers makes it likely enough that two men stamped 2040 and two stamped 2667 passed through the same hospital within a few days of each other. Virtually every number prior to that had already been used in the hospital's inner system, and several times among the victims out back. The hospital number there is debatably relevant, but it too gets linked to false detainee death reports, and might be used in the same way - see below. Every number up to 5,000 gets used twice here, and a few lower numbers get used a third time (it runs 1-4,999 first plain, then again with /b, then with /another letter(unclear - s?), allegedly running up past 1,000). And then each alleged MI branch responsible for killing their prisoners on such a scale issues virtually every number up to whatever. And there are nine branches to issue numbers.
For example, over the whole span, the number 458 would be passed seven times between all sources in that graphic above. Once in the "/0 system" and six times in the "Caesar photos" system:
as unidentified body number three times, and also with photo victims 215-458, 216-458, 227-458. So there are 6 chances for the /0 system's body #458 to line up with one of those.
Lower number should be repeated more time with the lower-killing branches included, but 215 and 227 are missing a lot of lower / early entries, so the most common numbers come out at best like 59:
Branches 227, 216, 251, 220, 235, and 248 each have a "detainee" #59. 215 does not (that's included as such). These six plus 59 used 3x as body number in this system, and once in the hospital's inner system = ten bodies logged as #59, one way or another, at one point or another, just at this one place.
Other numbers like 1441 just get repeated five times total (just twice as hospital number, once each for 227 and 215, the only two huge-yield branches, and once in the /0 system). The numbers in question here (2040, 2668) are of this kind - only 5 instances. And numbers 5,000 or past are used maybe zero times. I've seen a number past 5,000 written on a card with a body once, but it seemed odd, out-of-place, and everything else says they stop just before that and re-start with a new letter suffix for body numbers, and no other system is seen ticking that high. 215's detainee/body numbers stop in the low 4,000s, and everyone else's stop far lower than that (except the stray, misplaced-seeming high numbers found here and there).
Usually, the 4-9 outer repetitions of a given number won't come close at all to lining up, on the calendar, with the same number on the one system running inside the hospital. But with that many systems running at once, it's likely at least 2, and even "several" cases will. They probably wouldn't line up down to the day, but close enough to explain the two cases of possible or near-matches we've seen. And so I propose something very much like this does in fact explain it.
Some Closing Thoughts and Overview
If this is the kind of coincidental line-up I propose, it could be tested against the documents by anyone with access. There wouldn't be any non-227 "detainees" that roughly match with the hospital's /0 system in this span (e.g. branch 215 bodies were numbered in the 3100s at this time, and no one else issued number so high, except AF intel, but just a few and sporadically, and at random times -allegedly. Let's skip that for now). And even 227s will fail to line-up outside this time-span. Investigators well be able to find a couple more detainees who died around the time their own numbers line up the same way with some branch of the bodies out back, even if these are two different systems. One with enough data may could test that against the hypothesized /0 system for logical consistency - is the number too small or too large to make sense at that date? Or does my theory still make sense even with that added point?
But if this is just a trick here, one could not locate the thousands of death reports suggested by the December order to document every death in custody see part 2), to show in thousands of cases heart attack claimed, body held with current branch number regardless of the date, that lines up with the numbers on those starved bodies ... I suspect there are only dozens, not thousands, of such reports, because there was no systematic killing. and it's probably just these 2 and possibly a couple more that have that convenient feature of seeming to line up with photo victims.
The later case is said to be just one of at least "several" shown the Channel 4, each with "matching Caesar photos." How well these others matched is unclear. As noted, every number from 1 to whatever was used 5-10 times here, so it means nothing that they found a matching number in several cases. If their interpretation is right, there should be thousands of these matches, all being number AND date matches. But maybe all but 2 or 3 of these "several" are just some random rare detainee death that has a best of 1-3 matches in the photo set, but the dates don't even come close to matching, so the CIJA don't give out any details, even to Channel 4
As shown, that "several" might be the few sheets on top of some binder, or maybe the whole binder as well - that's unclear. The two we see (one presumably being the one included on the show) are both 95% redacted.
But no, we'd need more information - more examples with clearer matching details, a better sense of the timeline that winds up a true match, etc. - before it would be wise to link these benign-seeming documents to that horrific crime spree.
Also consider how these 227 matches fly in the face of - or combine awkwardly with - a previous explanation offered by the central witness in all this, "the Defector code-named Caesar."
As the 2014 Carter-Ruck report was paid by the Qatari royal family to explain "the procedure for documentation was that when a detainee was killed each body was given a reference number which related to that branch of the security service responsible for his detention and death." That's the top dual-number in this card shown at right, as a refresher. "Caesar" himself later claimed it was a prisoner number issued on order of arrest. But noting how every prisoner would then be killed in their order of arrest, the Carter-Ruck report, Human Rights Watch, and others have overlooked that claim to decide this number is issued only upon death. It's a branch-specific dead body number. But opinions differ, even among those blaming "Assad."
Then, the Carter-Ruck report continues, "When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital." They were citing the explanation provided by "Caesar." (p. 13, under "V. The Evidence of “Caesar”") This will be the hospital number as seen above, the number used for the big timeline further above, that runs to 5,000, then re-starts with a /b. HRW and others have repeated this over the years, and it seemed like the evident truth.
But in these specific cases considered in this long post, the CIJA now propose hospital storage number is adopted from the responsible MI branch # (issued at death? So only then?). So their detainee/body # 227-xxx becomes xxx/0, maybe with other branches swapped out with 1s and whatever. The bottom number has no clear use in that scenario. If it had much value like Carter-Ruck heard, it should be sent back to MI leadership for their reference, as the new thing added at the hospital. But only their own alleged prisoner number (already known) is re-affirmed here. That seems pointless.
So "Caesar" and the CIJA may contradict each other here - or not. The logical way they might correlate that so no one is wrong: there's a number for the prisoner/stored body (top), and one for the covering paperwork (bottom). A card shows them together for correlation. So the late case is stored under 2667/0, and then given a false death report numbered 4738/b. Why not file the paperwork conveniently under the number used for storage? Who cares? It's going to the Hague!
And it's not the biggest or clearest deal I've seen. But it does seem like both numbers are cited for the same basic purpose because too many people are trying too hard to take these heart attack reports (alleged thousands of them, at least a few proven) and connect them to those thousands of very real dead bodies. Different people link them randomly to every number they see, at different times, making short-circuits likely.
Also consider how these 227 matches fly in the face of - or combine awkwardly with - a previous explanation offered by the central witness in all this, "the Defector code-named Caesar."
Then, the Carter-Ruck report continues, "When the corpse was taken to the military hospital it was given a further number so as to document, falsely, that death had occurred in the hospital." They were citing the explanation provided by "Caesar." (p. 13, under "V. The Evidence of “Caesar”") This will be the hospital number as seen above, the number used for the big timeline further above, that runs to 5,000, then re-starts with a /b. HRW and others have repeated this over the years, and it seemed like the evident truth.
But in these specific cases considered in this long post, the CIJA now propose hospital storage number is adopted from the responsible MI branch # (issued at death? So only then?). So their detainee/body # 227-xxx becomes xxx/0, maybe with other branches swapped out with 1s and whatever. The bottom number has no clear use in that scenario. If it had much value like Carter-Ruck heard, it should be sent back to MI leadership for their reference, as the new thing added at the hospital. But only their own alleged prisoner number (already known) is re-affirmed here. That seems pointless.
So "Caesar" and the CIJA may contradict each other here - or not. The logical way they might correlate that so no one is wrong: there's a number for the prisoner/stored body (top), and one for the covering paperwork (bottom). A card shows them together for correlation. So the late case is stored under 2667/0, and then given a false death report numbered 4738/b. Why not file the paperwork conveniently under the number used for storage? Who cares? It's going to the Hague!
And it's not the biggest or clearest deal I've seen. But it does seem like both numbers are cited for the same basic purpose because too many people are trying too hard to take these heart attack reports (alleged thousands of them, at least a few proven) and connect them to those thousands of very real dead bodies. Different people link them randomly to every number they see, at different times, making short-circuits likely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)