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some viewers may find the following content disturbing. and in new doesn't move forward no amount of from where i usually it was. since the arab spring swept syria twenty eleven tens of thousands of people have been arrested. nobody knows the true figure or how many are still held captive in the government's dungeons. i'm a career. we're servants in the field of international criminal justice. or to the

yugoslavia tribunal rwanda tribunal i was the first investigator at the international criminal court. as will be the final act in my career. bill wiley and his team of war crimes investigators have been smuggling material out of syria to a secret location in europe. we've extract about six hundred thousand pages of regime documentation. this all of potential evidence abandoned by the syrian regime could help build the case for a prosecution before the international criminal court. the king or queen if you will of evidence and any international criminal investigation is always documentation it isn't really easily cross-examined it

because it's it's factual it's truth. in the kind of papers the canadian investigator has found thousands of internal communications relating to mass arrests. tens of thousands of syrians have been tortured and killed in the regime's jails since twenty eleven. arrests and disappearances part of a systematic government policy. we're trying to lay the foundations for a prosecution along in the lines where the prosecutors can lead with heavy heavy irrefutable documentary material. stephen rapp former u.s. ambassador at large for war crimes has prosecuted some of the worst mass atrocity crimes in recent history he's working with bill wiley on the case. who said nurnberg that the nazis were. marginally convicted on their own documentary evidence. yeah country its life the germans have it documented mad they document

things that even implicate within said oh to build a case against president assad or any other individual we went where the documents took us. the paper trail first led to the protests that began in syria in twenty eleven and to the fate of many of those who were taken to the streets. i guess we must like that story and it is. the father of us here. at the mouth of the. gun jonah head of months or the. most and came from

a middle class left wing family who had been targeted by the syrian regime for decades for wanting democratic change. they opposed the authoritarian rule of the assad clan that had governed syria with an iron fist for over forty years. and in twenty eleven the arab spring swept across syria. because. since true from a lot. i'll bet a first to hit the a. while all the. while i had said it's like the whole the mullet and even the asphalt. just off

guard that most of. the water not be there nor. mahram hora teacher from damascus was a supporter of the regime and a member of president assad's ruling baath party. but her youngest son. a dentistry graduate joined the protests. of second round i'm so glad someone. got its use of the i welcome when you see any. kind of tears for having been see anyway. to go. although mario opposed the demonstrations at first she was won over by her son's enthusiasm . the news just last sunday. you don't want them out was sure what he said and he didn't find out how to how he can annoy. the hustlers and what they got

into here because all. it. was. going to come on the side and child abuse in the harry. yeah and you know that the only image anyhow terry. insisted. out. from the very outset president assad's forces responded by shooting protesters killing scores of people. but the regime's violent repression just brought more protesters out onto the streets. ah ha yes it looked like it was losing control it issued an order to arrest people on an unprecedented scale.

war crimes investigators have pieced together what happened behind the scenes. among the six hundred thousand 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 interrogations solve in particular finance years of demonstrations persons who instigate demonstrations and persons who communicate with foreign media or international organizations who as it says here tarnish the image of syria. the order came from the top of the syrian regime from a central crisis management cell set up 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. the security forces made mass arrests and the regime created more detention facilities to cope with the influx of detainees hospitals became part of the system . one of them was to shareen military hospital in damascus. muhammadan worked at the hospital for the regime he's a defector he had an emergency department and was there when some of the first protesters were brought in by the security forces. and so long for the. most of the live kahneman. can. south.

of jodi you. can address. that you'll get a bell had a lot. of other things. that they do but i had a lot of. what the twenty five. over. more than two hundred thousand people were arrested in a matter of months. marty and son and i'm started working for a syrian human rights group documenting the disappearances. the first time i met him i was in my office and he was coming to me joking and he was like smiling he has like a special smart. i thought he was funny and he was very nice. omani

and am 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 button field they were carrying guy phones pointing at us their rifles we were all shocked isn't the central theme. i think the americans killed their own. men. i mean i'm sure we. can make things or we'll highlight. the air force intelligence branch admits a military airport in damascus or am months or in their colleagues were taken is the science of one of the most notorious detention facilities in syria. some of us were destroyed. we were of course.

was different really he was like smiling trying to make a smart he would he said he wanted us to sing with them all the time after a month months or an am were moved to another detention facility. because as a doctor they were beating him or it was like. they used to come the soldiers used to come to. us 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 he was silent all the time. maybe because of the other beating he was going to cause he suffered so much. i

don't know how he had of that. meanwhile a muslim had also come to the attention of the security forces for organizing protests in his hometown. he fled to damascus to evade capture. investigators have thousands of arrest lists of who was wanted by the regime. we asked them to search through them for muslims name. ok so we've got a hit here. it's a mosque no mater. what's been logged here is a note dated january two thousand and twelve indicating that a certain moslem. 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 arrested. in march

twenty two alone for muslim was in a cafe with his nephews after they had helped supply baby formula to a besieged area. by the missile. on those are all of. the law but let's assume the senate. had whilst. i was so i was actually here in a way. that. i didn't know it's me on the. fourth the i was on is that the i love. film so. i'm not

a law. or. yeah i mean. that's we'll not. for. their belief. because that of their that are far. from the norm or they're. going to not use left and the mark or to look a minute or go off. to look a mirror though she were. my shift and one of the put a hundred sitter or merely another day that got off what. i thought we were doing a bit of the subtlety of life. love will be a flop for we've which walking. the walk of luck.

will you have to look at this i love our luck with life even ritual for. the further i would her could also be only if we have the nickname but the fact that the. big dick that that a lot of been a part. of the. last sign your. collection will. get a few more. i should work if but for my inside and it all for you i think in a column of us if. you could have shot the. liquid in a sort of earth they had to look. hard have

a look of death look and sell your left eye while you know that this was sort of. polar wide marsh all about janet. up i love to have a look at that death of hospital. and have to you fear not the people who did that . to your lovely. well their lives are off.

the cliff now that. they're. you know 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've 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 substantial way too many people have been physically abused people have been psychologically abused too many people died in detention of unnatural causes. to say that there's

anything else but a widespread and indeed systematic. practice of abuse. witnesses say the abuses weren't confined to the detention centers even when they were sent to hospital for treatment to torture continued. muslim says he was so severely beaten that he was urinating blood. he was taken to a military hospital close to the detention facility hospital six zero one. eight. zero. zero zero let's look at that. plus a little less for that a little bit oh dear.

sure we just added the second but just as likely to think that it looks it just. so we're in a our. heads have that when it. has had a glass of gin but i post here. so i thought i wanted to and that's the way i like that idea in the bottle not political oh i left for the head off that i left for the sphere it's. a small slice what is that sick meal. hospital six or one is less than a kilometer from the president on science promise. detainees were also taken to the

to sri military hospital where mohammad was working for the regime. if people were counted up and just how and what the clean. a b. of a live up the would you or the made up he would hope the shaheed the. seller. for how to modify your part because. he had more know your. a lot and a lot of minima and a lot of all the if he did hire all the for get a short book for kelly amount if you look up the amount you took up the cabinet don't let him out and you can either i don't want to if you had the macand for your mil a young. lady in a feature in the last few months for if you missed this for but the more. i learned that a part of your sort of yemen involvement a civil fashion. spittles are implicated in the regime's own records.

for example of war crimes investigators have found this memo from detectives in one province to their superiors complaining of a problem. quote parents and relatives of the arrested persons are daily asking about the fate of sons fathers and brothers you want 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. that means the syrian regime knows exactly what's going on. it knows who has been detained and what has happened to them but they refuse to give any information to the families.

tens of thousands of people are thought to be still missing in detention including over two thousand children. sometimes prisoners are released. from sun am was freed after three months but monsoor and his cell mates were kept in jail without any contact with the outside world. i talked to them oh he said to them i want to tell you something that's more than what we need to keep it secret this is ok of them i told them we have. fifty seven people here and we need to read all their names we details as much as possible so when someone of us go out can take those names with them so we started like looking for the tools. 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. and we started collecting names and writing them over to all the names over the news we were worried that somebody could leak this news division or it's likely came military information to the enemy because the names of the dinies in a military place is secret information you could be having tor it if they knew about it. meanwhile my arm son a ham was back at university doing his master's thesis in dentistry. it was there were six months after his release members of the students' union aligned to the regime that kidnapped him and handed him over to military intelligence. he was taken to a detention facility to one in five. on the. us

it's not that any of that there are finally knee i mean i mean one of the clan the neverland. and in the in need of old nominee from what i usually it was who gives up i'll admit a lot for them not all up there on the and they're that little and i wouldn't mind seeing. but niam did not give up risking arrest herself she continued to press the regime for information about her missing son. by this time monsoor had secretly documented the names of his fellow detainees on scraps of cloth. now they had to find a way to smuggle them out of jail. 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 corners. so nobody will suspect that we bleached to each other the first one who will. will wear it out of. my name was called. months or got the names out. when i look at those should be says written of blood blood of people who are still there some of them i knew i got the news they are. i have their blood with me i have the outraging over me.

i feel it it's filled with swords with their swords. i called many families and their families need to know at least they have the right to know if their sons are dead or alive. eighteen months after him disappeared still searching for and. she constantly requested information about him from the military police. to make any only knew she had. to side out of my make it easier. the assistant gave my arm this not. enough. thinking me just let me were sitting. just says lol just so it all so high he will not even time. the note says that a corpse number three hundred twenty died on november eleventh twenty twelve only

six days after he had been arrested. all this time the regime had known he was dead but refused to tell or. like other detainees families was finally given a death certificate stating that her son had simply died of a heart attack in a hospital. but she refused to believe that version of events and was determined to find out the truth. had to finally condemn beside him and what a heinous newest birds. to free. him in the battle but. you know me in particular. had. this in the muscle and then had to assess if he knew.

you. know that oakley thingy that and then she had them in the. bam still unexplained death is symbolic of the fate of many critics of us as are. thousands of syrians still disappear into the network of detention centers across the country but the regime stubbornly continues to deny any allegations of torture . until a defector from the regime provided proof code named caesar his identity was kept secret. he said he had been a member of the syrian military police working as a forensic photographer additionally military hospital and hospital six o one. he escaped from syria with thousands of photographs. the regime had been painstakingly documenting its own crimes. the scenes are

photographs show the corpses of almost seven thousand people who died in regime custody one of them is corpse three hundred twenty from detention center two one five. i looked at the dorm i knew the two of them towards him it was oh use a riff and. i missed them on. the white house it was just the sort of in command make a grad student beauty or harming them i would widen. nine years further. a new model has a lot of who. like. most of the

images most famous just. who. and i mean. and then took on the incident to pull up to put the. wood in the mini a bit of. mazar not hamada is going to geneva to demonstrate outside the united nations building and call for the release of syria's disappeared detainees. he'll wear the flag of the revolution around his shoulders.

eyes or these are printed on photos to take with him in some cases there are entire families like this photo of a syrian chess champion with her husband and children. though they're all imprisoned. miles and was released after eighteen months in detention and now lives in the netherlands but several close family members are still missing in a sense prison's he doesn't know if they're dead or alive. it's five years to the day the protests began in syria as muslims fellow travellers had to geneva to take part in demonstration. was still sitting in the songs of the syrian revolution. let's. close.

like my eyes and many of them were detained and tortured. some of them at their homes destroyed all of them have friends or family who have been disappeared by the syrian regime. they're determined to get their loved ones free. it cut the opposite. a. bit i. feel. in although the fall of the fall in the south.

was tens of thousands of people are missing without a trace. the un has accused the syrian government of the murder rape torture and systematic 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. rosen and his colleagues are also campaigning for the release of civilians held by groups fighting assad's regime the so-called islamic state and other islamist groups. will come on tell us a little notice. that jalil. i'm sure. we saw that still sell it. but the effectiveness of such campaigns is still open to question.

the syrian regime is still locking up its political opponents. stephen rudd's former u.s. ambassador at large for war crimes issues is suing the assad regime. and syria's is for justice he's trying to bring public attention to the victims in the seas our photographs in exhibitions around the world. and i want to thank you for being here tonight to bearing witness to these. and stating your solidarity with these very. wrap is frustrated by the failure of the u.n. to act on the overwhelming evidence of the syrian regime's crimes. we're talking about the security services retirement state security the military

security for the air force intelligence within the chain of command official forces this is silly this is the clearest case that i've ever seen this is abundant evidence that we've got more so much more that maybe. it's embarrassing and a way to protect quit it's embarrassing we've got no court to thank it but there is one route to justice and rap is pursuing it hundreds of syrian families have identified their loved ones from the see saw 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 a european court. how is your health and everything you feeling ok yeah it's ok as much as it is helping right but the case trying to identify members of the regime who have slipped into europe. he very much

wants to be a public whatnots and that records good to great restaurants are why after you've done all this to this to us to me what more can you really do i remember a woman who struggled and kill came to speak to me in another conflict zone and then later that day proceeded by security forces. who threatened out and said just go ahead and kill us just kill us we can't tell the story i was told and so there is that point where no witnesses really truth sure makes it hard for any student discount the truth coming. out of the nor lens and. mourn in a home with an under him and the new king and the dean was

a. nice thought feel the norm theming know me at the well i left in the sun. but you know how can you know said ross and for all of me you could. hearken. to him can take his or side that man you. hear the music of the show and we. miss it at all it always does seem. to know that and. much of what that outstanding young thinking. like most of the families whose loved ones have died in detention i'm still has no idea what happened to her son's body. and the lower.

be. miserable i am being has been. an e.m.t. i meant new great how come the senator said look like he listed the in the this is a concert here normally i mean for the moon god with us president assad still denies any wrongdoing when confronted with the seas are photographs like this was his response oh very high pictures with a very funny but they're not edited in photoshop it's all just propaganda just taking you with they want to do when i proceed in government in every war you can't have any individual crime that happened over the world anywhere but it's not a policy. amnesty international estimates that between twenty eleven and twenty fifteen up to thirteen thousand people were executed it says in one prison alone said nyah mass hanging's were authorized by the highest levels of government i

don't know what's goes on in that prison have you been there no i haven't been in the presidential poll of what it was because. when i asked about any other allegations aside refused to comment. mclean on the. forward he could be if he and he didn't think in chief. i just work on hundred one . well that's a sitting on the docket mirka concentration camp calls are stopped and we don't expect confessions that's what we have come up processes or account of their support probably that it was that they. don't want to hear and reject. then suddenly there's a breakthrough. this is to one of the victims in the series of photographs is a syrian spanish dual national and is filing the case against the syrian regime for

the torture and murder of her brother claiming that she is also a victim of the crime. and medina ban on or a known international human rights lawyer has taken on the case she and run are filing it today in spain's national court in madrid. the charge is state terrorism while the state itself use those institutions to terrorize their own people basically to send a message if you dare rise up to their demand your your god given rights you're going to be tortured and murdered. stephen ross 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 ever leave syria this is the beginning of justice for those so

for those victims. of the 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 free and able are still getting lost a lot of their guns. we all know this we have evidence where provable that while doing nothing the other. side. have. said.

enough it. was to live. when they died and certainly. i mean. free space. that's the theme of this year's architecture be enough to invent. the german people again that's to tear down. and young chinese architect games to revive rural villages. spanx and respect.

our special on. thirty minutes on. for. her place. in maine until sixteen and a crime to go to obama was cool. young people to build against their parents' generation. it was an obsolete place dusting full of stupidity and tissues and. they demanded nothing less than a home of societal wanted maelstrom of insanity of toilets would be a moment for playing a role in the my generation i'm going to watch the bomb war every day of the war documentary takes a limited amount of time and slow limbs more to come into the her for the first

time i had a feeling of being part of something means. cantons of those events today. masood spoke of civil rights the peace movement the women's movement was planned during this period. clinton sixty years the middle. east would double. the same in. place. a massive fire has broken out in brazil's two hundred year old national museum in rio de janeiro it's feared the flames have destroyed the museum's collection of more than twenty million items the museum directors called it a cultural tragedy the cause of the blaze is not yet known. at least two people have been wounded by gunfire at anti-government demonstrations in nicaragua

protests have flared up in the capital managua over president daniel ortega us recent decision to expel a human rights to.