Gambar Presiden Assad di salah satu sudut jalan di Suriah (Reuters)
Damaskus - Pemerintah Suriah yang dipimpin Presiden Bashar al-Assad dituding secara sistematis membunuh dan menyiksa tahanan di negara tersebut. Dilaporkan ada sekitar 11 ribu orang yang menjadi korban penyiksaan dan pembunuhan tersebut.
Laporan terbaru yang dirilis pada Selasa (21/1) ini didasarkan pada bukti-bukti yang diberikan seorang pembelot Suriah dan dianalisis oleh tiga mantan jaksa internasional ternama. Dalam laporan telah dilakukan pemeriksaan terhadap ribuan foto yang diselundupkan keluar oleh seorang mantan fotografer polisi militer Suriah.
Foto-foto mengerikan tersebut menunjukkan bukti secara jelas soal adanya kelaparan, penganiayaan terutama pencekikan dan pemukulan terhadap tahanan Suriah. Terlihat juga adanya mayat-mayat berperawakan kurus dengan banyak luka di tubuhnya.
Laporan tersebut disusun oleh Desmond de Silva yang merupakan mantan ketua jaksa di pengadilan khusus untuk Sierra Leone. Juga oleh Geoffrey Nice yang merupakan mantan jaksa dalam persidangan mantan Presiden Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, dan juga oleh David Crane yang mendakwa Presiden Liberia Charles Taylor.
"Foto-foto ini menunjukkan bahwa selama bertahun-tahun telah terjadi pembunuhan sistematis para tahanan dengan adanya kelaparan, penyiksaan, pencungkilan mata, penganiayaan secara keji, mutilasi," tutur Desmond de Silva seperti dilansir Aljazeera, Rabu (22/1/2014).
Laporan ini, menurut David Crane, harus dijadikan bukti kuat untuk melanjutkan segala bentuk pelanggaran pidana ke pengadilan. "Sekarang kita memiliki bukti mengenai apa yang terjadi terhadap orang-orang yang menghilang," ucapnya.
"Ini merupakan bukti pertama yang bisa menunjukkan secara jelas mengenai apa yang terjadi terhadap sedikitnya 11 ribu orang yang disiksa dan dieksekusi, dan tampaknya dibuang," imbuh Crane.
Sang pembelot yang menyebut dirinya sebagai 'Caesar' menyerahkan sekitar 55 ribu foto dari 11 ribu tahanan yang tewas sejak kerusuhan pertama kali terjadi di Suriah pada Maret 2011 lalu. Nyaris semua korban tewas berjenis kelamin laki-laki, kecuali satu korban. Sebagian besar korban berusia antara 20-40 tahun.
Menurut Caesar, para korban telah tewas di dalam tahanan sebelum akhirnya dibawa ke rumah sakit militer untuk difoto. Caesar menuturkan, setiap harinya ada sekitar 50 jasad yang harus difoto olehnya di rumah sakit.
Caesar menambahkan, foto-foto tersebut awalnya bertujuan untuk pembuatan sertifikat kematian, yang sebagian besar akan dipalsukan dengan menyebut bahwa korban tewas di rumah sakit. Kemudian juga untuk menjadi bukti bahwa eksekusi pemerintah telah dilakukan. Mayat-mayat tersebut kemudian akan dimakamkan di wilayah pinggiran Suriah.
Bukti yang diberikan Caesar tersebut telah diperiksa oleh ahli forensik yang ditunjuk oleh kantor hukum di London yang mewakili Qatar, yang bertanggung jawab atas laporan tersebut. Laporan ini dirilis hanya sehari sebelum perudingan mengenai Suriah digelar di Swiss. Laporan tersebut akan diserahkan kepada PBB dan organisasi HAM yang ada.
Pemerintah Suriah sendiri telah membantah melakukan penganiayaan terhadap tahanan.
Starved, tortured then throttled: The true horror of how Assad’s soldiers execute rebel prisoners is revealed in new images
- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
- A second cache of photos of victims of torture has been released
- Taken by man tasked with 'recording deaths in custody' by Syrian regime
- Total of 55,000 photos which lawyers say are evidence of extreme torture
- Could be used to bring charges of war crimes against Bashar al-Assad
By SARA MALM
PUBLISHED: 16:18 GMT, 23 January 2014 | UPDATED: 07:58 GMT, 24 January 2014
More
photographs showing the maimed bodies of alleged victims of ‘systematic
killings’ in Syrian prisons have been released today.
The
second cache of photos paints an even clearer image of the horrendous
conditions and gruesome torture in government-run jails in Syria.
The images, some of the 55,000 leaked by a witness ‘tasked with recording deaths in custody’, were taken between 2011 and 2013.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Shocking: A second set of pictures from
the 55,000 photograph dossier showing alleged victims of torture and
systematic killings in government-run prisons in Syria has been released
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Murder: The corpses are said to all be members of rebel forces who have been kept in Syrian jail by al-Assad's military police
The
second release echoes warnings from human right's experts earlier this
week that the first set of images only showed the tip of the iceberg.
The
pictures were smuggled out of Syria by a military police photographer,
who has been saving the files over two years, and handed to the
opposition.
When
the first photographs were released earlier this week, they were
described as 'clear evidence' of crimes against humanity by a team of
war crimes prosecutors.
They
show emaciated corpses with strangulation marks, cuts, bruising and
signs of electrocution – evidence of extreme torture, claim
investigators. Some victims are shown to have had their eyes removed.
The
photographer served as a military police officer for 13 years, and was
assigned the duty of documenting the dead bodies brought to the military
hospitals controlled by the Syrian regime during the civil war.
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
The person who leaked the photographs
says he was a part of the Syrian military police for 13 years and it was
his job to photograph dead bodies brought to military hospitals from
government jails
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Proof of war crimes: The photos were
all taken during the Syrian civil war, between 2011 and 2013, and
smuggled out of the country
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Stomach turning: The bodies are all
lined up, side by side, before their injuries are documented, allegedly
by Syrian government forces
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
True evil: This horrific photo shows a man who shirt is covered in blood, with a rusty chain embedded into his stomach
The
bodies depicted in the photographs are all said to be members of rebel
groups killed in detention under torture and starvation.
They
show handwritten notes by on the faces and the bodies of the corpses,
and allegedly used by the Syrian army as the records of death sentence
enforcements, carried out systematically in government-run prisons.
On
Tuesday Foreign Secretary William Hague, as well as the U.S.
government, condemned the crimes shown in the photographs, and demanded
that the perpetrators be brought to justice.
Mr
Hague described the images as 'compelling and horrific', and said: 'It
is important those who have perpetrated these crimes are one day held to
account.'
A
spokesman from the U.S. State Department said: 'These reports suggest
widespread and apparently systematic violations by the regime. These
most recent images ... are extremely disturbing. They're horrible to
look at.'
The
initial 31-page report was commissioned by Carter-Ruck solicitors in
London on behalf of the Qatari government, which supports the Syrian
uprising.
It was released as peace talks began in Switzerland on Wednesday to try to end the three-year conflict.
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Mediating: U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon sits beside U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi as
he addresses a news conference in Montreux on Wednesday
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Pro-government: Supporters of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad outside the opening of the Geneva II peace
talks, in Montreux, Switzerland yesterday
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
The images released are said to show
victims of 'systematic killings' in prisons run by President Bashar
al-Assad, pictured earlier this week in Damascus
Sir
Desmond de Silva, one of the Carter-Ruck lawyers who compiled a report
on the credibility of the images, said that the evidence 'documented
industrial-scale killing.' He pointed out that because the images
purport to come from just one part of Syria, the human rights abuses
could be much more widespread.
‘This is a smoking gun of a kind we didn’t have before. It makes a very strong case indeed,’ he said.
‘It is the tip of the iceberg because this is 11,000 in just one area.'
About
130,000 people have been killed and a quarter of Syrians driven from
their homes in the civil war, which began with peaceful protests against
40 years of Assad family rule and has descended into a sectarian
conflict, with the opposing sides armed and funded by Sunni Arab states
and Shi'ite Iran.
High-level
mediating has yielded little so far, but Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN
mediator who is meeting separately today with each Syrian delegation,
said there are signs they might be willing to bend on humanitarian aid,
ceasefires and prisoner exchanges.
Amid
hostile exchanges at the peace talks in Switzerland, Syria’s government
ridiculed demands by opposition leaders and their Western backers
including Britain for Assad to stand down, saying it would never happen.
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
The feet of the photographer and a colleague can be seen in this photograph next to the emaciated remains of a prisoner
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Evidence: One man with a white beard and grey hair has several open wounds on his arm and chest
[backcolor=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4)]+12
Purple bruising and lacerations cover the upper body of another male victim photographed by the military police in Syria
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan