Dispatches (1987–…): Season 31, Episode 10 - Syria's Disappeared: The Case Against Assad - full transcript

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(solemn music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- These are torture champers, full stop.

(chanting in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language)

(solemn music)

- [Bill] I'm a career servant

in the field of international
criminal justice.

I worked at the Yugoslavia
Tribunal, Rwanda Tribunal,

I was the first investigator

at the International Criminal Court.



This will be the final act in my career.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Bill Wiley

and his team of war crimes investigators

have been smuggling material out of Syria

to a secret location in Europe.

- [Bill] We've extracted
about 600,000 pages

of regime documentation.

- [Narrator] A wealth
of potential evidence

abandoned by the Syrian regime

that could help build the case
for a criminal prosecution.

(solemn music)

- The King or Queen, if
you will, of evidence

in any international
criminal investigation



is always documentation.

It isn't really easily cross-examined,

because it's factual, it's truth.

- [Narrator] In the cache of papers,

investigators found thousands
of internal communications

relating to mass arrests.

With tens of thousands
of Syrians disappeared

in detention since 2011

and allegations of abuse,

Bill's team wanted to find out

whether the arrests were
part of a systematic policy.

- We're trying to lay the foundations

for a prosecution along
the Nuremburg lines,

where the prosecutors can lead

with heavy, heavy, irrefutable
documentary material.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Stephen Rapp has prosecuted

some of worst mass atrocity
crimes in recent history.

He's working with Bill Wiley on the case.

- It was said in Nuremburg
that the Nazis were, you know,

largely convicted on their
own documentary evidence.

You have a country
that's like the Germans,

they document mad.

They document things that
even implicate themselves.

- We didn't set out to build a case

against President Assad
or any other individual,

we went where the documents took us.

- [Narrator] The paper trail
first led the investigators

to the protests that
began in Syria in 2011

and to the fate of those
who took to the streets.

(peaceful music)

- [Narrator] Mazen came from a left-wing,

middle class family who had been targeted

by the Syrian regime for decades

for wanting democratic change.

(celebratory music)

They opposed the authoritarian
rule of the Assad family,

who had governed Syria
with a repressive military

and security apparatus for over 40 years.

- [Narrator] Then in 2011 the Arab Spring

swept across Syria.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Mariam Hallak,
a head teacher from Damascus,

was a supporter of the regime

and a member of President
Assad's ruling Ba'ath Party.

But her youngest son,
Ayham, a dentistry graduate,

joined the protests.

- [Narrator] Although Mariam opposed

the demonstrations at first,

she was won over by her son's enthusiasm.

(chanting in foreign language)

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] From the outset,

President Assad's forces
responded by shooting protesters,

killing scores of people.

(gunshots ringing)

The regime's violent repression

just brought more
protesters to the streets.

- [Narrator] As the regime looked like

it was losing control,

it issued an order to arrest people

on an unprecedented scale.

(chanting in foreign language)

War crimes investigators
have pieced together

what happened behind the scenes.

Among the 600,000 pages of smuggled

Syrian intelligence documents,
they discovered this.

- This is the key document,

which sets out the policy of the regime

after several months of protests.

It sets out the categories of persons

to be detained for interrogation.

So in particular, financiers
of demonstrations,

persons who instigate demonstrations,

and persons who communicate
with foreign media,

or international organizations,

whom, as it says here,
tarnish the image of Syria.

- [Narrator] The order was from the top

of the Syrian regime,

from a body akin to a war cabinet

established to deal with the protests.

The investigators have
thousands of documents

showing it was passed all the
way down the chain of command.

- The regime was hammering
peaceful protesters.

- [Narrator] The security
forces made mass arrests.

And the regime created
more detention facilities

to cope with the influx of detainees.

Hospitals became part of this system.

One of them was Tishreen
Military Hospital in Damascus.

Mohamad al-Hamoud worked at
the hospital for the regime.

He's a defector.

He headed an emergency department

and was there when some
of the first protesters

were brought in by the security forces.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Over 200,000 people

were arrested in a matter of months.

Mariam's son, Ayham, started working

for a Syrian human rights group

documenting the disappearances.

- The first time I met
Ayham, I was in my office,

he was coming to me joking

and he was, like, smiling, he
has, like, a special smile.

I thought he was funny
and he was very nice.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Mansour al-Omari and Ayham

had only been working at the

human rights organization for a month

when their offices were
raided by the security forces.

- Soldiers were coming in like
they were in a battlefield.

They were carrying rifles,
pointing at us their rifles.

We were all shocked.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] The Air
Force Intelligence Branch

at Mezze Military Airport in Damascus,

where Ayham, Mansour and
their colleagues were taken,

is the site of one of most

notorious detention facilities in Syria.

- Some of us were destroyed.

We were, of course, scared and,

Ayham was different, really,
he was, like, smiling.

Trying to make us smile.

He sang.

He wanted us to sing
with him all the time.

- [Narrator] After a month,

Mansour and Ayham were moved
to another detention facility.

- Because Ayham is a doctor,
they were beating him more.

It was like that.

They used to come, the
soldiers used to come down

and ask, "Where is the doctor?"

That's what they say.

So each time he came in, he
had two or three open wounds

and the other, the rest of
his body, is red or blue.

He changed.

He was silent all the time.

Maybe because of that, of
the beating he was getting,

because he suffered so much.

I don't know how he handled it.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Mazen too

had come to the attention
of the security forces

for organizing protests in his hometown.

He fled to Damascus to evade capture.

(solemn music)

Investigators have
thousands of arrest lists

of who was wanted by the regime.

We asked them to search for
Mazen's name in the documents.

- Okay, so we've got a hit here.

It's Mazen Hamada.

What's been logged here is
a note dated January 2012,

indicating that a certain Mazen Al Hamada

and indeed certain of his
associates should be picked up

or detained if they come across him.

What effectively they're saying is,

we're looking for him

and if you come across him, arrest him.

(solemn music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] In March 2012,

Mazen was in a cafe with his nephews,

after they had helped supply baby formula

to a besieged area.

- [Interviewer] And how do you feel

about the people who did that to you?

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] In a secret
location in Europe,

Bill Wiley's investigators
are building a criminal case

against the Syrian regime.

Using their cache of smuggled
intelligence documents,

they have interviewed hundreds of people

whose names appear on the regime's

arrest lists and interrogation notes.

- The treatment of detainees

in different parts of the country

did not differ in any substantive way.

Too many people have
been physically abused,

too many people have been
psychologically abused,

too many people have died in detention

of unnatural causes to say
that there's anything else

but a widespread and, indeed,
systematic practice of abuse.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Witnesses say the abuses

weren't confined to the detention centers.

Even when they were sent
to hospital for treatment,

the torture continued.

Mazen says he was so severely beaten

in detention he was urinating blood.

(solemn music)

He was taken to a military hospital

close to the detention
facility, Hospital 601.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Hospital 601
is less than a kilometer

from President Assad's palace.

Detainees were also taken to
Tishreen Military Hospital,

where Mohammed worked for the regime.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Hospitals are implicated

in the regime's own documentation.

War crimes investigators found this memo

from the judicial police in one province

to the head of the criminal
security branch there,

complaining of a problem.

- Quote, parents and relatives
of the arrested persons

are daily asking about the fate

of sons, fathers and brothers.

You ought to listen to
what they have to say.

The hospital refrigerator is
full of unidentified corpses

that have disintegrated,

since they have been there
for a long period of time.

And what's particularly
interesting in this case

is that this individual has
copied the Minister of Justice,

so this localized problem

is being brought to the
attention of Damascus.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] The top of the
regime was being notified

of the criminal nature of
their detention policy.

(solemn music)

The Syrian regime know
who they have detained

and what has happened to them,

but they refuse to give
families any information.

There are tens of thousands of people

still missing in detention,
including over 2,000 children.

Sometimes prisoners are released.

Mariam's son Ayham was
freed after three months

but Mansour was still locked up.

He and his cellmates had no
contact with the outside world.

- I talk to them, I say to them,

I want to tell you
something that's important,

but we need to keep it secret.

They said, "Okay, then."

I told them, we have, like 57 people here

and we need to write all their names

with details as much as possible,

so when someone of us go out,

they can take those names with them.

So we started, like,
looking for the tools.

- [Narrator] They tore off
pieces of their shirts,

found a fragment of
chicken bone to write with

and used rust and their own blood as ink.

(solemn music)

- And we started collecting names

and writing them every day.

All the names written in this.

We were worried that somebody could

leak this news to the jailers.

It's like leaking military
information to the enemy,

because the names of
detainees in a military place

is secret information.

You could be hanged for
it if they knew about it.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Mariam's son Ayham

was back at university, doing
his masters in dentistry.

It was there, six months
after his release,

that he was seized

and beaten by members
of the students' union

aligned to the regime.

They handed him over to
military intelligence

and he was taken to
Detention Facility 215.

- [Narrator] Mariam did not give up.

Risking arrest herself, she
continued to pursue the regime

for any information about her missing son.

In detention, Mansour had
secretly documented the names

of his fellow detainees
on scraps of material.

Information that their families

on the outside were desperate for.

The cellmates now needed a
plan to smuggle the pieces out.

One of us, he was a tailor,

and he said, "I can do it.

"I can put it inside the hem of the shirt

"and inside the collars

"and it will not appear,
so nobody will suspect it."

We pledged to each
other that the first one

who will be out will wear it

and take it out with them.

My name was called.

It was me.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Mansour got the names out.

- When I look at those shirt
pieces, written with blood,

blood of people who are still
there, some of them I knew,

I got news they're dead.

I have their blood with me,

I have the handwriting of a man.

(solemn music)

These shirts are, I feel,

it's filled with souls, with their souls.

I call many families,

and the families need to know at least,

they have the right to know

if their sons are dead or alive.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Mariam was
still searching for Ayham

18 months after he
disappeared in detention.

She was constantly requesting
information about him

from the military police.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] The assistant
gave Mariam this note.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] The note says
that Ayham, Corpse 320,

died on 11th November 2012,

which was only six days
after he was detained.

All this time, the regime
had records about his death,

but had refused to tell Mariam.

Like other families of detainees,

she was finally given a death certificate,

stating her son had simply died

of a heart attack in hospital.

She refused to believe
that version of events,

and was determined to find out the truth.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Mariam
believed she now had proof

that her son had died in regime detention.

As thousands of Syrians
continued to disappear

in the network of detention
facilities across the country,

the regime continued to deny

the allegations of torture that abounded.

But then came a defector.

Here in the blue hood.

His identity hidden, he
was codenamed Caesar.

He claimed to be a member

of the Syrian Military Police,

working as a forensics photographer

at Tishreen Military
Hospital and Hospital 601.

He escaped from Syria with
thousands of photographs.

(dramatic music)

For Stephen Rapp,

then US Ambassador for
Global Criminal Justice

in the Obama administration,

the photographs were a breakthrough.

- When I finally gained
access to the images,

which I did in April of 2014,

and sat on the computer

and went through them, you
know, one after the other,

it's just, it's like pictures of hell.

The most excruciating painful
things that you can imagine.

For example, with eyes gouged,

and you also see pain on the face,

you know, kind of the frozen images

of the last moments of life.

- [Narrator] Some of
the corpses are of boys.

There are thousands of
bodies in the photographs.

This picture was taken in the garage

of Military Hospital 601.

- Of course, the first thing is the shock

that the regime itself is
taking these photographs.

They were actually numbering, indexing,

photographing, building files,

on the people that they tortured to death

in total violation of international
law, of their own laws,

and were keeping meticulous records of it.

- [Narrator] Stephen met the defector,

Caesar, now in hiding.

- One of the first questions
I asked Caesar was, you know,

Why did they do this?

They want a record of deaths,

they have to do a death certificate,

I mean, what's the reason here?

And he said, "Well, that was a part of it,

"but part of it is, the
regime is so bureaucratic

"that it's stupid."

You know? (chuckles)

That everybody has to follow

these sort of standard procedures,

and that's what they were
doing in this particular case,

and in the process of doing it,

creating extremely powerful
evidence against themselves.

- [Narrator] These are
images from two of the files

that Caesar and his team of
forensic photographers created.

The texts confirms that the
photographs are of detainees,

that they were held at
Detention Facility 215,

and that the bodies were
photographed at Hospital 601,

according to standard procedures.

- When someone dies in
prison, what do you do?

You send the body to the
Investigation Bureau.

Evidence would have been
gathered from the corpse,

it would be possible, then,

to dispose of the corpse
in a legal fashion.

But it would be going through
this sort of play-act.

- [Narrator] For Stephen, the evidence

against the Syrian regime
for mass atrocity crimes

is some of the strongest he has ever seen.

- Well, you've got facilities there

that are part of the regime,

under the control of the President,

so they can't say, oh, it's a bunch

of crazy thugs that were doing it

and we were against that,

we wanted people treated humanely,

but you know, sometimes boys will be boys,

and I guess we just didn't know.

Well, now they know

and they're not doing anything about it,

not punishing a single soul.

So, you then have a case
under international law

of so-called command responsibility,

that makes commanders
responsible if they know

and they don't do anything.

You don't even have to
prove they gave an order.

It's enough.

So this makes this, you know,

the legal equivalent of a slam-dunk!

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Families trawled
through these head shots

from the Caesar photographs
looking for their loved ones.

There are over 6,700 corpses of people

who died in regime custody.

Among the photographs is Corpse 320,

belonging to Detention Facility 215.

- I looked at it, and I knew it was him.

It was him, it was his
eyes, it was everything.

- [Narrator] Mazen is going to Geneva

to demonstrate outside the United Nations

and call for the release of
Syria's disappeared detainees.

He's printed out their
photos to take with him.

In some cases, entire
families have been imprisoned.

- [Narrator] Mazen was released

after 18 months in detention,

but he has several close family members

still missing in
President Assad's prisons.

He doesn't know if they are dead or alive.

(speaking in foreign language)

It's five years to the day
that protests began in Syria.

Mazen's fellow travellers to Geneva

took part in those demonstrations

and they're still singing the songs

of the Syrian revolution.

(singing in foreign language)

Like Mazen, many of them
were detained and tortured.

Some have had their homes destroyed.

All of them have friends or family

who have been disappeared by the regime.

They're determined to get
their loved ones freed.

(singing in foreign language)

(chanting in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Tens of thousands of people

are currently disappeared
in regime detention.

The UN has accused the Syrian
Government of the murder,

rape, torture and
extermination of detainees,

all crimes against humanity.

But a Security Council resolution

to refer Syria to the
International Criminal Court

was vetoed by Russia and China.

Much of the international focus

has been on the crimes of Isis

and other Islamists groups

that the Assad machine
are fighting in Syria.

They have also imprisoned civilians,

though on a much smaller scale.

Mazen is campaigning to
release those detainees, too.

- [Narrator] People are
still being arrested

by the Syrian regime.

Despite the campaign, little is being done

to save the detainees.

- Hundreds of thousands
of people that have fled.

- [Narrator] Stephen Rapp has left his job

as an ambassador with
the Obama administration

and is campaigning.

- And the cry from Syria is for justice.

- [Narrator] He's trying
to bring public attention

to the victims in the in
the Caesar photographs,

in exhibitions around the world.

- And I want to thank you
for being here tonight,

to bearing witness to these crimes,

and stating your solidarity
with these victims.

- [Narrator] Stephen is frustrated

by the failure of the UN to act

on the overwhelming evidence

of the culpability of the Syrian regime.

- We're talking about the
security services here.

We're talking about state security.

We're talking about military security.

We're talking about
air force intelligence.

Within the chain of
command, official forces.

This is Syria.

This is the clearest
case that I've ever seen.

This is abundant evidence now.

We've got so much more than we need.

You know, it's embarrassing, in a way.

And it particularly is embarrassing

that we've got no court to take it to.

- [Narrator] But there
is one route to justice

and Stephen is pursuing it.

Hundreds of Syrian families
have identified their loved ones

from the Caesar photographs.

If just one of the thousands of victims

was found to be a European national,

or one of the perpetrators of these crimes

was found on European soil,

that would present a way of opening a case

against the Syrian regime
in the European court.

- [Stephen] How's your
health and everything?

You feeling okay?

- Yeah, it's good.

- It's okay?
- Yeah.

- [Narrator] Mazen is helping
Stephen with the case.

He's trying to identify
regime perpetrators

who have slipped into Europe.

- He very much wants
to be a public witness

and that directly puts
him greatly at risk,

and it's sort of like,

after you've done all
of this to us, to me,

what more can you really do?

I remember women whose
children had been killed,

and who came to speak to me,
in another conflict zone,

and later that day,

they were visited by security forces

who threatened them.

And they said, just go ahead and kill us.

Just kill us, you know, if
we can't tell this story

then we might as well die.

And so there is that
point that witnesses reach

which makes it hard for any of us

to discount the truth
that they're telling.

(solemn music)

(solemn music)

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Like most of the families,

whose loved ones have died in detention,

Mariam still has no idea what's
happened to her son's body.

- Here.
- President Assad

denies any wrongdoing.

When confronted with
the Caesar photographs,

this was his response.

- Who verified the pictures?

Who verified that they're not edited

and Photoshopped and so on?

It's just propaganda.

It's just fake news.

They want to demonize
the Syrian Government.

In every war you can have
any individual crime.

It happens all over the world, anywhere.

But it's not a policy.

- [Narrator] In one
prison alone, Saydnaya,

Amnesty International estimates

that up to 13,000 people were executed

between 2011 and 2015, in mass hangings,

that it says were authorized

by the highest levels of government.

- Do you know what goes on in that prison?

Have you been there?

- No, I've been in the
presidential palace.

Not in the prison! (laughs)

- [Narrator] When asked about
the allegations in our film,

President Assad did not respond.

- Even the Nazis sitting
in the docket in Nuremberg,

looking at concentration camp films

were still denying it

and we don't expect confessions,

that's why we have criminal processes

that hold people to account

based upon probative evidence

that they themselves don't
want to hear and reject.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] There has
been a major development.

The sister of one of the victims
in the Caesar photographs

is a dual Syrian-Spanish national

and is filing a case
against the Syrian regime

for the torture and murder of her brother,

claiming that she is
a victim of the crime.

Almudena Bernabeu, a
renowned international

human rights lawyer, is taking the case.

She and Stephen are filing it today

in Spain's national court, in Madrid.

The charge is state terrorism.

- When a state itself
used those institutions

to terrorize their own people,

basically to send a message.

If you dare rise up, if you dare

demand your God-given rights,

you're going to be tortured and murdered.

- [Narrator] Stephen and the legal team

are naming nine individuals
in the complaint,

including the leaders
of Syria's intelligence

and security services,

part of President Assad's inner circle.

The focus will now turn
to getting arrest warrants

to apprehend the alleged perpetrators

if they leave Syria.

- This is the beginning of
justice for those victims.

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] While a court case

may bring justice for the dead,

the urgent need is to
free those still inside.

- We need those who are
detained to be freed.

People are still detained.

Most of them are underground.

We all know this.

We have evidence.

We have proof about that.

Why are they doing nothing about that?

- [Intreptor] He want to pass a message.

- [Interviewer] Oh yeah sure.

(speaking in foreign language)
(solemn music)

(singing in foreign language)

(chanting in foreign language)

(solemn music)