DECONSTRUCTING THE CARTER RUCK REPORT ON SYRIA

Anything that everybody's unfavourite controlled-left newspaper The Guardian trumpets should be read with extreme caution. I destroyed the credibility of The Guardian a few weeks ago with an analysis of its editorials following the horrific events at Ghouta on 21st August last year. Essentially The Guardian/Observer:
1. Immediately and consistently accused Assad;
2. Not once considered the cutthroats as the culprits, despite an abundance of evidence that they had chemical weapons, had tested them on live rabbits, had issued threats on video of using chemical weapons to get what they wanted, and were in desperate need of something spectacular to provoke an overt large scale military attack by NATO to save their necks;
3. Was overjoyed at Syria relinquishing its stockpile of chemical weapons but not once mentioned Israel's much larger, more devastating, more threatening stockpile of not just chemical weapons but also nuclear and biological weapons.

Two days ago The Guardian (who else?) published a report based on a report produced by Carter Ruck on the alleged systematic abuse, torture and murder of detainees held by the Syrian government. The report was sponsored by Qatar, and was based on a single source, a man with the pseudonym "Caesar", who claims to have photographed hundreds of corpses after they had been abused, tortured and murdered by the Syrian government. The photographs published in the Carter Ruck did look horrible and indicated some kind of abuse and torture.

But of whom?

And by whom?

Let's look at the three 'experts' who signed off the report. Geoffrey Nice QC prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic was fighting against the attacks on Yugoslavia by the Anglo-American Establishment, and was winning his case against Nice, so he was murdered. And what of Ian Crane QC? Apparently Crane worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Crane, a former employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), told the Guardian: “Now we have direct evidence of what was happening to people who had disappeared. This is the first provable, direct evidence of what has happened to at least 11,000 human beings who have been tortured and executed and apparently disposed of. This is amazing … We have the person who took those pictures. That’s beyond-reasonable-doubt-type evidence.”

In fact, the report has no evidence to back up Crane’s claims, or even to prove that the victims were killed by Assad’s forces. All the “evidence” cited by the report consists of unseen photographs allegedly located on a flash drive in the possession of an operative codenamed “Caesar,” who has been working with Syrian opposition groups since September 2011.

“Caesar” was briefly interviewed in an unnamed Middle East country by the three lawyers on January 12, 13, and 18. The lawyers and the associated forensics team preparing the report were not given access to the full contents of “Caesar’s” flash drive.

“Caesar” claimed that his flash drive contains 55,000 photographs that the Assad regime asked him to take of the remains of detainees it had tortured and murdered, while “Caesar” was working as a military policeman. There is no credible explanation of why the Assad regime, if it had tortured and murdered 11,000 people, would have asked “Caesar” to carefully document it.

The report states, “Some 5,500 images were examined in total by the forensics team … Within these 5,500 images, images of a total of 835 deceased persons were evaluated in detail. Of these, 20 percent showed evidence of inflicted trauma and 30 percent were equivocal. Forty-two percent showed emaciation.”

That is to say, the report’s authors have not seen evidence that 11,000 people were killed—a figure for which they are relying entirely on “Caesar” and whatever Middle Eastern regime is hosting him. The figure of 11,000 dead cited in the press has no evidentiary basis at all.

The report does show a dozen of these photographs, including what appear to be several horribly emaciated bodies. However, as “Caesar” and the Carter-Ruck team blurred the date stamps and location information on the photos, it is impossible to know where or by whom they were killed.

While the Assad regime is known to practice torture, having tortured suspects rendered to them by Western intelligence in the so-called “war on terror”—before US imperialism moved to back Al Qaeda against Assad—it is hardly the only possible suspect.

[source : As Geneva talks open, US advances trumped-up torture charges against Syria, WSWS, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/22/syri-j22.html, 22nd January 2014]

So, just before talks begin to discuss and end the covert invasion of cutthroat Jihadis in Syria, a report, sponsored by yet another utopia of freedom, democracy and human rights, Qatar, is trumpeted in the controlled-left NATO media, as 'proving' that the Syrian government abused, tortured and murdered 11000 detainees, when in fact no evidence to support these claims has been provided, and what evidence that has been provided shows the bodies of a handful of men. But who were they? And who killed them? And who is this source "Caesar"?

And the authors of the report are intimately linked to the Anglo-American Establishment; one prosecuted Milosevic, and another worked for the DIA.

But as I said, this is la Perfide Albion.

It's gud 'ere, innit?