The report, which was first made available to The Guardian and CNN, was written by a six-person panel of experts assembled by a law firm working for the government of Qatar, a main sponsor of the Syrian opposition. The team included three former prosecutors from the international tribunals for Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist who investigated mass graves in Kosovo and an expert in digital imaging provenance.
The report does not reveal the name of the man who provided the photographs, identifying him by the pseudonym Caesar. That reminded some skeptics of Curveball, the code name assigned to the Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, whose bogus claims about mobile biological weapons labs formed a central part of the case for the American invasion of Iraq. In 2011, just before the first street protests against President Assad’s Baathist dynasty, Mr. Janabi admitted to The Guardian that he had lied to German and American intelligence officials.
The timing of the report’s release, as diplomats and representatives of the Syrian government and opposition manoeuvre ahead of peace talks in Geneva, also suggested to some observers that the inquiry might have been part of an effort to weaken Mr. Assad’s position in negotiations. The opposition, and its foreign supporters, including the United States, have called for him to step down, while Mr. Assad himself, buoyed by support from close allies like Iran and Russia, told Agence France-Presse this week that he was considering another term in office.
Speaking to Ms. Amanpour on Monday about the photographic evidence, the forensic pathologist on the Qatari-financed team, Dr. Stuart Hamilton, explained that he had examined thousands of images but not the complete set because of a tight deadline for the report’s delivery.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/war-crimes-experts-call-syrian-defectors-photographs-direct-evidence-of-assads-killing-machine/
Slightly more skeptical.
= new reply since forum marked as read
