Foreign Policy
Syrian Military Defector ‘Caesar’ to Testify on Capitol Hill Thursday
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Washington Wire
By Dion Nissenbaum
People assist an old woman at a site hit by what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Duma in eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus July 29, 2014. (REUTERS/Badra Mamet) Reuters
The former Syrian military crime-scene investigator who helped document years of suspected torture and killing under President Bashar al-Assad is scheduled to tell his story to U.S. lawmakers on Thursday as part of a concerted effort to pressure the U.S. government to take more decisive action in the conflict.
Known by the pseudonym Caesar, the middle-aged Syrian military defector arrived in Washington on Monday for a weeklong series of meetings with lawmakers and members of the Obama administration who have examined thousands of graphic photographs he helped smuggle out of Syria. Caesar’s work, based on interviews with war-crimes investigators, defectors, and opposition leaders working with Caesar, was the subject of an in-depth WSJ story.
On Thursday, Caesar is expected to disguise his identity when he delivers his first public testimony to the House Foreign Relations Committee. The briefing is likely to put renewed focus on the Obama administration’s Syrian policy of providing limited support for moderate opposition forces trying to topple Mr. Assad.
Critics have been calling for years on President Barack Obama to provide more decisive military support for Syrian opposition groups battling the Syrian government and extremist Islamist rebel forces.
Caesar worked for years as a military photographer in Damascus, where he documented the deaths of thousands of Syrians killed during the ongoing civil war. As the death count grew, Caesar reached out to opposition forces and began smuggling photographs out of the country.
By the time the Syrian opposition faked his death last year and helped get him out of the country, Caesar had provided anti-Assad activists with 55,000 photographs that have become the cornerstone of an international investigation of potential war crimes in Syria.
The Assad regime has denounced the photographs as fabrications and exaggerations used by its opponents to discredit the regime.
International war crimes investigators, including Stephen Rapp, head of the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, have determined that the images are evidence of systematic torture and killing by the Assad regime.
On Monday, Caesar wore a baseball cap and sunglasses when he spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. He is expected to wear a similar disguise when he speaks on Thursday.
READ MORE: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/07/29/syrian-military-defector-caesar-to-testify-on-capitol-hill-thursday/?mod=WSJBlog
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