Roger Godsiff MP is hosting a meeting in the House of Commons on the Caesar photographs, which document systematic torture, brutality and murder by the Assad regime.
Caesar: The reality behind the Syrian refugee crisis
Wednesday 28 October, from 1.30pm to 3.00pm in Committee Room 14.
The exhibition displays photographs of detainees from the Syrian regime’s prisons and detention centres. The photographs were taken by a former military policeman of the Syrian army, known as ‘Caesar’, who fled Syria in 2013. Caesar smuggled out with him over 55,000 photos of approximately 11,000 Syrians tortured by the Assad regime—a fraction of the total number of people killed inside Syrian prisons. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry has cited the photographs as clear evidence of systematic human rights violations by the Assad regime, and the FBI verified them as credible evidence for future legal proceedings.
The exhibition of photographs has been shown at the UN in New York, the US Congress and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and the European Parliament in Brussels.
Panel speakers:
- Frederic Hof, Former US Special Adviser for Transition in Syria and Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council
- Steven Heydemann of Smith College and the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution
- Mouaz Moustafa, Director of Syrian Emergency Taskforce
- Kristyan Benedict, Head of Campaigns for Amnesty International UK
Chair: Roger Godsiff MP
Plus video messages from: US members of Congress, Holocaust survivors and US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Stephen Rapp.
Please RSVP to warringtona@parliament.uk Photographs will be displayed at this event which some may find upsetting.
A press call with the opportunity to interview panellists will take place immediately after this event in room W3, Westminster Hall. If you would like to register for this, please contact Nour Bakr at london2@independentdiplomat.org
For more background read ‘They were torturing to kill’: inside Syria’s death machine, an interview with Caesar by Garance le Caisne, The Guardian, 1 Oct 2015.