Horror photos from inside Syria's torture chambe...
Horror photos from inside Syria's torture chambers go on display at US Holocaust Museum as war crimes prosecutor calls Bashar al-Assad's regime 'an industrial killing machine not seen since the Nazis'
- WARNING: GRAPHIC, DISTURBING CONTENT
- The photos in the US Holocaust Museum are part of a collection of 27,000 smuggled out of Syria by a former photographer for the regime
A collection of horrific photos taken inside Bashar al-Assad's Syrian torture chambers is going on display at the US Holocaust Museum.
The pictures show dozens of mangled, emaciated corpses of men who were starved, strangled, shot, beaten and tortured to death at the hands agents working for the Syrian president.
One veteran civil rights prosecutor said the pictures document 'an industrial killing machine not seen since the Holocaust,' Yahoo News reports.
Stephen Rapp, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, told Yahoo that the photos are 'some of the strongest evidence we've seen in the area of proof of the commission of mass atrocities.'
WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT
Never again: The US Holocaust Museum is putting a selection of photos from the Syrian massacre on display
These pictures of men who had been tortured to death were taken by 'Caesar,' a former Syrian government photographer who defected and handed over a trove of 27,000 pictures to investigators
The images are part of a cache of 27,000 pictures that were smuggled out of Syria by 'Caesar,' a photographer with the Syrian military police who defected after documenting the brutality of al-Assad's regime.
'Caesar,' who is currently in hiding in Europe, was tasked with documenting deaths in government custody by the Syrian military.
His pictures show unimaginable horror. Eyes gouged out. Hands bound. Bodies so emaciated from starvation that ribs poke through the skin. Men who died from being stabbed, strangled, shot or beaten.
An estimated 100,000 civilians have been killed since the Syrian people rose up against Assad, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since taking power from his father in 2000.
Before the country broke into all-out civil war, the Assad regime's secret police and military abducted many thousands of protesters and tortured them to death.
The pictures show that these men died from grotesque torture and abuse. Caesar has testified that they died as captives of the Syrian government
Over 100,000 civilians have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Assad has ordered brutal crackdowns since the movement began
David Crane, a former war crime prosecutor who worked in Sierra Leone and interviewed 'Caesar,' compared the atrocities in Syria to those committed by the Nazi in the Holocaust.
US Congressman Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Caesar to testify in front of his committee in July. He made the same grim comparison, telling Yahoo News: 'my father had taken photos at Dachau when it was liberated, of the bodies stacked up at the ovens. This is eerily reminiscent. It's absolutely appalling.'
The Holocaust Museum, which is in Washington, DC, has previously spoken out about the unspeakable human rights violations in Syria. In February, the museum sent a delegation of observers to Jordan to record the horror conditions faced by refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.