AUGUST 1, 2014
Graphic images of emaciated and bloodied corpses in the Syrian civil war were presented to uncharacteristically silent members of Congress on Thursday as a former military photographer testified about the signs of savagery he witnessed, Associated Press reports.
Codenamed “Caesar,” the man appeared before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in disguise, his face concealed by a blue hooded raincoat, hat and glasses. Before defecting from Syria last year, he smuggled out 55,000 photos showing more than 10,000 bodies.
Fearing for his safety, the man whispered to an interpreter, who repeated his words aloud in English.
He said he witnessed a “genocidal massacre.”
“I am not a politician, and I don’t like politics. Neither am I a lawyer,” Caesar said. But he said he couldn’t simply continue doing his job taking pictures of the dead as the number of bodies being brought in by military and intelligence officials multiplied after anti-government protests erupted in 2011.
The corpses included young children, the elderly, women and his own neighbors and friends, though he couldn’t tell their families about what he saw.
“Death would have been my fate if the regime found out,” he said.
The US State Department arranged Caesar’s trip to the United States but did not provide his name to any members of Congress.
No audio or video recordings were permitted in the hearing, as Republicans and Democrats alike took the opportunity to question Caesar about what he saw and call on the Obama administration to adopt a more forceful policy to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government. Caesar’s photographs were enlarged and displayed on poster board in the background and on television monitors mounted on each side of the room.
No comments:
Post a Comment