The Guardian, which obtained access to the report, says that the source of the report's claims is a military police photographer who secretly worked with a Syrian rebel group before defecting and fleeing the country. In the process, the defector smuggled the images of "killed detainees" out of the country on memory sticks.
The defector, identified in the report as "Caesar," does not claim to have witnessed executions or torture himself. However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk...
he describes the bodies of detainees, mostly young men, as being emaciated, blood-stained, and, in some cases, bearing signs of strangulation or electrocution.
The report claims that Caesar photographed as many as 50 bodies a day. The purpose of the photographs, according to the defector, was to allow a death certificate to be produced without allowing families of the dear departed to see the body, as well as to confirm that orders to execute prisoners had been carried out. Families were usually told that their loved ones died from either a heart attack or "breathing problems."
The 31-page report was commissioned by a London-based law firm operating on behalf of the government of Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups in Syria and repeatedly called for Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
to stand trial for war crimes. Two of the report's authors, Sir Desmond de Silva and David Crane, argued war crimes cases related to the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone, while the third author, Sir Geoffrey Nice, led the prosecution of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague.
The publication of the report is believed to be timed to coincide with this week's peace conference in Geneva, which has been convened with the hope of creating a transitional government.