Putin’s move Against NATO, Checkmate

After the no-fly zone mission over Libya to remove Qaddafi, we quickly determined the weaknesses of the member nations in NATO. The United States worked in concert with a few NATO countries to fly the sorties and it was rapidly determined that we had to loan ordnance and assume full control due in part to lack of partnered countries readiness, willingness and longevity in the mission.

Since that time, NATO leadership is attempting to re-gain strength and resolve yet that is proving to be an epic challenge.

The matter of Russia annexing Crimea and then moving into East Ukraine by Putin has put additional pressure on NATO. Success of offensive measures by NATO is fleeting and Vladimir Putin is ready for his checkmate on Ukraine while eyeing other territories.

Diplomatic efforts have failed so far and Ukraine is feeling alone and isolated while other Baltic States are in much the same condition.

This puts larger pressure on the United States and that is only IF the United States is interested in aiding Ukraine and other Baltic countries, which to date is questionable at best.

Video here.

The full report is here published by the British Parliament on NATO’s lacking preparation.

British Defense Committee Finds NATO ‘Poorly Prepared’ to Defend Members From Russian Threat

Our conclusion is that NATO is currently not well-prepared for a Russian threat against a NATO Member State. A Russian unconventional attack, using asymmetric tactics (the latest term for this is “ambiguous warfare”), designed to slip below NATO’s response threshold, would be particularly difficult to counter. And the challenges, which NATO faces in deterring, or mounting an adequate response to, such an attack poses a fundamental risk to NATO’s credibility.

This Report focuses narrowly on NATO, Article 4 and 5 obligations, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, rather than the more general debate about Russia and global security threats. We have chosen this focus because the NATO conference will be hosted by the UK in September; because this is of central concern to Eastern European NATO members; because the attack on Ukraine has raised the possibility — however currently unlikely — of an attack, conventional or unconventional, on a NATO Member State in the Baltics, potentially requiring an Article 5 response; and because such a response would be challenging and requires significant adaption from the UK and NATO.

The report begins with an analysis of Russia: its conventional forces, its new approach to asymmetric warfare, and its apparent intentions. It then considers NATO’s preparedness to respond, first to the less likely scenario of a conventional Russian attack, then to the scenario of an asymmetric attack. It concludes that NATO is poorly prepared for either scenario, and suggests urgent steps that would need to be taken to meet these challenges.

Our specific concerns about NATO’s deficiencies in its ability to respond to a conventional attack include:

• Shortcomings in NATO’s ability to foresee and to give adequate warning of such an attack;
• Shortcomings in NATO’s command and control structures; and
• Questions about the public’s readiness to honour the Article 5 commitment.

Russia’s use of “next generation warfare” tactics also poses a range of questions for NATO, including:
• Whether Article 5 is sufficient to ensure that the collective defence guarantee will come into effect in the face of asymmetric attacks;
• Whether NATO has the right tools to address the full breadth of threats, including information warfare, psychological operations and, in concert with the EU, exertion of influence through energy and trade policy; and,
• Whether NATO has the ability to effectively counter the threat of cyber attack from Russia and to mount its own offensive cyber operations.

We are also concerned that even ts in Ukraine seem to have taken the UK Government by surprise, that the capacity for analysis and assessment of developments in Russia and for understanding and responding to the current Russian way of warfare appears to have been seriously degraded in recent years.

Recommendations

The NATO alliance has not considered Russia as an adversary or a potential territorial threat to its Member States for twenty years. It is now forced to do so as a result of Russia’s recent actions. Events in Ukraine this year, following on from the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007 and the invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008, are a “wake – up call” for NATO. They have revealed alarming deficiencies in the state of NATO preparedness, which will be tough to fix. The UK Government should take the lead in ensuring that the NATO Summit addresses these threats in the most concrete and systematic fashion.

We recommend that the NATO Summit sets plans to ensure:
• dramatic improvements to the existing NATO rapid reaction force;
• the pre-positioning of equipment in the Baltic States;
• a continuous (if not technically ‘permanent’) presence of NATO troops, on training and exercise in the Baltic;
• the re-establishment of large-scale military exercises including representatives from all NATO Member States. These exercises must involve both military and political decision-makers;
• the establishment of headquarters structures, at divisional and corps level, to focus on Eastern Europe and the Baltic;
• consideration of the re-establishment of a NATO standing reserve force along the lines of the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force–Land, involving all Member States; and,
• re-examination of the criteria, doctrine and responses to calls under Article 4 for ‘collective security’ support against asymmetric attacks, especially, but not limited to, cyber attacks where attribution is difficult.

We recommend that the NATO Summit also addresses the Alliance’s vulnerabilities in the face of asymmetric (ambiguous warfare) attacks. In particular it should consider:
• How to establish the intelligence processes and an “Indicators and Warning” mechanism to alert Allies to the danger or imminence of such an attack;
• What steps it needs to take to deter asymmetric threats;
• How it should respond in the face of an imminent or actual such attack;
• The circumstances in which the Article 5 mutual defence guarantee will be invoked in the face of asymmetric attack;
• How it can, as a matter of urgency, create an Alliance doctrine for “ambiguous warfare” and make the case for investment in an Alliance asymmetric or “ambiguous warfare” capability.

We recommend that the Ministry of Defence address, also as a matter of urgency, its capacity to understand the nature of the current security threat from Russia and its motivations. Ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of Defence Attachés to provide the analysis and expertise required is one measure which would help to address this issue. In particular we recommend the appointment of additional Defence Attachés to cover the Baltic States and in Central and Eastern Europe and reverse the cutbacks in Russia and Ukraine. We further recommend that the Government ensure that there is adequate representation in Poland which may be of critical importance in the future. We also recommend the creation of a “red team” in the Ministry of Defence to provide a challenge to existing orthodoxy from a specifically Russian perspective.

We recommend that, in opening the NATO Summit, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State should make a commitment to the UK maintaining defence spending at or above 2% of GDP. Increasing levels of spending amongst European NATO Member States and the collective efficiency of such spending must be made a priority of the Summit as a demonstration of NATO’s political will and its commitment to collective defence.

 

John Kerry Ignores Atrocities

After 4 years of Hillary and now with John Kerry at the helm, we are seeing that any diplomatic efforts have failed for the past 6 years.

There are conflicts globally where Islam is at the core of each, when it comes to Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and now Syria has fallen off the billboards of news.

Syria has been the foundation of much of the recent hostilities in the Middle East and yet John Kerry is in India re-establishing relationships. The solution to the matter of Russia and Ukraine is more sanctions on Putin, Argentina has defaulted on an epic loan to the United States, Central America is a failed region as witnessed by the population insurgency into America.

Now, where is the talk of Iran? There is none, why? Because of the delicate talks that continue with pushing back deadlines on a constant basis over their nuclear program, John Kerry does not want to rattle the Ayatollahs there.

But Iran and Russia are at the core of all the mess and John Kerry along with the White House ignoring the basis of pocket wars across the globe. The biggest winner so far is Iran and Syria.

So let us look again at Syria….but it is graphic. We cannot ignore a repeat in history so you must not shy away. Bashir al Assad is guilty of crimes against humanity and the UN ignores as does the West. The photo below is not about the civil war in Syria, this is about how Assad has been torturing people outside the scope of the war and an estimated 10,000 have been in his prisons now dead by starvation and torture.

Assad has his own killing fields and they were hidden until now.

Syrian Army Defector, “Caesar,” Briefs Committee, Shows Photographs Documenting Atrocities by Assad Regime — Chairman Royce Opening Statement

Briefer smuggled 50,000 photos out of Syria, shares story, photos in public for first time

Washington, D.C. – Today at 9:30 a.m., U.S. Rep.  Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, convened a briefing entitled, “Assad’s Killing Machine Exposed: Implications for U.S. Policy.”  The Committee is being briefed by “Caesar,” a Syrian Army defector who was witness to and a documenter of Bashar al-Assad’s lethal brutality.  This briefing is the first public setting in which “Caesar” has shared his story.

“Caesar,” who is appearing in disguise at the briefing, has smuggled out of Syria more than 50,000 photographs that document the torture and execution of more than 10,000 dissidents.

During the briefing “Caesar” is showing Committee Members a number of those photographs, some of which are available HERE.

***Please note these are VERY GRAPHIC images.

Below is Chairman Royce’s statement as prepared for delivery at the briefing:

Today, we examine evidence of horrific atrocities committed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad against the Syrian people.

The Syria crisis is now in its fourth year.  This is a crisis created and sustained by Bashar al-Assad, who responded to peaceful demands by Syrians for their universal rights with unspeakable violence – even against children.  In doing so, he has placed his own grip on power above the very survival of millions.

The conflict has created unimaginable human suffering.  According to international statistics, 11 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid – which Assad has blocked in many areas.  His “Kneel or Starve” campaigns are just one example of his brutality. 

Others include – targeted killings, mass graves, ethnic cleansing, sexual violence, widespread torture, aerial bombardment of residential areas with conventional and chemical weapons, and the extermination of entire families.

Assad’s brutality, as we know, is underwritten by robust military and other support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.  Syria is a humanitarian crisis, but a strategic challenge too, as Assad has pulled the entire region into violent chaos. 

Today, the Committee will view images of horrendous violence, carried out on an industrial scale.  It is no coincidence that these photos were shown at the Holocaust Museum earlier this week.  We will see evidence of the Assad regime’s killing of at least 10,000 political dissidents between 2011 and 2013.  The killing continues today.

In April, this Committee unanimously condemned Assad’s atrocities, passing H. Res. 520.  We also passed a resolution authored by Mr. Smith, which called for the establishment of a tribunal to hold accountable the perpetrators of war crimes in Syria.  Pure and simple, these photos cry out for justice. 

We are honored to be joined by four excellent witnesses, including “Caesar,” a defector from the Syrian army, who risked his life to collect and smuggle out of Syria over 50,000 photos of political dissidents tortured and killed by the regime after the protests began.  I offer you a special thank you for speaking to our Committee today.

One cannot see images like these and not ask, “what can be done?”  Answering that isn’t easy.    Mr. Engel was an early supporter of more aggressive action on Syria, when it wasn’t popular.  I’m not sure that’s changed much, but as Committee Members, we are charged with confronting these difficult issues, which are moral issues too. I appreciate our Members attending this briefing, a vivid and depressing reminder that while action can be costly, so too can inaction. 

War, the Contradictions and the Propaganda

There is supposed to be a war between the Sunni and the Shiites, that is the plan. There is supposed to be a war between the Islamists and the Jews, that is the plan. There is supposed to be a war between Socialists and the Capitalists, that is the plan.

There is money in all of these forced wars and it is a lucrative cottage industry just like that of the war on stopping climate change.

But back to the matter of Israel, Hamas and Gaza. There are many players in this conflict including Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the United States and with the hostilities comes billions, even trillions. Everyone has a hand out including journalists, humanitarian organizations and government factions. It is the money and propaganda successfully encourages the signing of checks and pledges.

We have been told in recent weeks about the tunnels in Gaza but not all of the facts regarding the tunnels. These tunnels are essentially toll roads underground that are by themselves huge payday makers requiring toll fees to be paid to smuggle everything from food, weapons, narcotics and medicine. Israel knows these tunnels well and is not sharing all their knowledge with good reason. Never give up your sources, methods or operational plans.

 

There will be no peace at the other end of the destruction of Hamas and the tunnels but eliminating rockets, some smuggling and terror leaders will give way to future conditions of which is still unknown given all the Middle East players.

A secret tunnel and terror headquarters is well known but by whom is the question and who is keeping the secret and why remains to be answered.

 

Top Secret Hamas Command Bunker in Gaza Revealed

And why reporters won’t talk about it

Globally, Forcing a Single Faith

Often we question the protections religion not only in America but worldwide and with good reason. We have witnessed the slow death of many faiths most especially Christianity in the Middle East while in other regions of the globe there is simply apathy to any faith.

Just this week,  Barack Obama put on a public statement on the White House website, another profound gesture to Islam. Any similar gesture towards the Christian community or to the Jewish community is fleeting at best.

Below is Barack Obama’s statement but we should also go deeper to what is happening in Iraq, the cradle of civilization and one historical Biblical location. Here is your chance to understand more.

Statement by the President on the Occasion of Eid-al-Fitr

As Muslims throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, Michelle and I extend our warmest wishes to them and their families.  This last month has been a time of fasting, reflection, spiritual renewal, and service to the less fortunate.  While Eid marks the completion of Ramadan, it also celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict, and disease.

In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.  That is why we stand with people of all faiths, here at home and around the world, to protect and advance their rights to prosper, and we welcome their commitment to giving back to their communities.

On behalf of the Administration, we wish Muslims in the United States and around the world a blessed and joyous celebration.  Eid Mubarak.

Where is the Barack Obama administration on the destruction of churches, synagogues, and even mosques?

 

Why Did ISIS Destroy the Tomb of Jonah?

by Mark Movsesian

On Friday, the media reported that ISIS, the Islamist group that has established a “caliphate” in parts of Syria and Iraq, had destroyed the centuries-old Tomb of Jonah in Mosul, Iraq. Present-day Mosul encompasses the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh, where, the Bible teaches, the Prophet Jonah preached. Although this is disputed, a tradition holds that Jonah was buried within the city, on Tell Nebi Yunus, or Hill of the Prophet Jonah.

An Assyrian church stood over the tomb for centuries. After the Muslim conquest, the church became a mosque; the structure that ISIS destroyed last week dated to the 14th century. In addition to the tomb, the mosque once held the supposed remains of the whale that had swallowed Jonah, including one of its teeth. At some point, the tooth disappeared. In 2008, the U.S. Army presented the mosque with a replica.

Last week, ISIS closed the mosque and prevented worshipers from entering. Then it wired the structure with explosives and reduced it to rubble. You can see a video of the explosion here, taken by a Mosul resident, who mutters, in Arabic, “No, no, no. Prophet Jonah is gone. God, these scoundrels.”

Some commentators have explained the destruction of the tomb as part of ISIS’s anti-Christian campaign. Scholars Joel Baden and Candida Moss point out that, in Christian interpretation, the Old Testament story of Jonah prefigures the death and resurrection of Christ. “The destruction of his tomb in Mosul is therefore a direct assault on Christian faith, and on one of the few physical traces of that faith remaining in Iraq.” Another scholar, Sam Hardy, told the Washington Post that the destruction of the tomb shows that ISIS is willing to destroy “pretty much anything in the Bible.”

On this analysis, ISIS destroyed the tomb because of its Christian associations. But that mistakes ISIS’s motives in this case. True, ISIS has no respect for Christians or their sites of worship and, in fact, has driven Mosul’s Christians from the city. The fact that the tomb was sacred for Christians as well as Muslims—and contained a present from the US Army—cannot have endeared it to ISIS. But something else is going on here. The shrine was, after all, a mosque, and Jonah figures in the Quran as well as the Bible. To understand why ISIS destroyed the tomb, one has to appreciate something about the version of Islam the group espouses.

ISIS is part of the Salafi movement, a branch of Sunni Islam that seeks to return to the practices of the earliest Muslims – the salaf— who lived at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and just after. The movement rejects the centuries of subsequent developments in Islam as unjustified innovations–pagan accretions that adulterated the faith. In particular, the movement opposes the veneration of the graves of Islamic prophets and holy men. Salafis see this practice, which is associated most frequently with Sufi Islam, as a kind of idolatry, or shirk, that detracts from the absolute transcendence of God.

Salafi Islam prevails in Saudi Arabia, where it enjoys the patronage of the royal family. On the Arabian Peninsula, as now in Iraq, Salafis have destroyed the tombs of Islamic holy men. Indeed, when the Saudi royal family captured the city of Medina in the 19th century, Salafis systematically destroyed the tombs of several of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions and family members, leaving only the Prophet’s tomb itself unmolested. There is some thought that the Saudi government plans on dismantling even that tomb, but hesitates to do so because of the uproar that would result in other Muslim communities.

In short, one should see ISIS’s destruction of the tomb of Jonah as an act principally directed at other Muslims, not Christians. That doesn’t make it any better, of course. Will the outside world do anything in response? Unlikely. Besides, as Professor Hardy told the Post, “If we didn’t intervene when they were killing people, it would be kind of grotesque to intervene over a building.”

The World is not Messy it is Evil

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay is in charge of global investigations. She is a thug herself as she is more concerned with charging Edward Snowden or Israel for their defense mission against the terror organization, Hamas.

So then why would al Assad of Syria get a pass on torture? Evil IS the United Nations.

10,000 Bodies: Inside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Crackdown

Photographs of Corpses Offer Evidence of Industrial-Scale Campaign Against Political Opponents by Assad Regime, U.S. Investigators Say

At Hospital 601, not far from the presidential palace in Damascus, Syrian guards ran out of space to store the dead and had to use an adjoining warehouse where military vehicles were repaired.

A forensic photographer working for Syria’s military police walked the rows and took pictures of the emaciated and disfigured corpses, most believed to be anti-Assad activists. Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards, the photographer said, told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of the Syrian security services had held them. (Graphic image follows.)

U.S. investigators who have reviewed many of the photos say they believe at least 10,000 corpses were cataloged this way between 2011 and mid-2013. Investigators believe they weren’t victims of regular warfare but of torture, and that the bodies were brought to the hospital from the Assad regime’s sprawling network of prisons. They were told some appeared to have died on site.

Last year, the Syrian military-police photographer defected to the West. Investigators later gave him the code name Caesar to disguise his identity. He turned over to U.S. law-enforcement agencies earlier this year a vast trove of postmortem photographs from Hospital 601 that he and other military photographers took over the two-year period, which he helped smuggle out of the country on digital thumb drives.

Over the ensuing months, U.S. investigators pored over the photos, which depicted the deaths and the elaborate counting system, and started to debrief Caesar and other activists involved in his defection. U.S. and European investigators have since concluded not only that the images were genuine, but that they offered the best evidence to date of an industrial-scale campaign by the government of Bashar al-Assad against its political opponents. U.S. Ambassador-at-large Stephen Rapp, head of the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, has compared the pattern to some of the most notorious acts of mass murder of the past century.

This account, based on interviews with war-crimes investigators in the U.S. and Europe, more than a dozen defectors, and opposition leaders working with Caesar, provides fresh details about Syria’s crackdown on its political opponents and the central role of Hospital 601 in processing bodies and documenting the deaths for the government.

Investigators haven’t finished analyzing the entire cache of photographs and are still trying to gather evidence to fully understand the regime’s role in the deaths. Prosecutors must be careful about jumping to conclusions before all the evidence is in, cautioned a senior U.S. official, who noted that investigators are far from finished debriefing Caesar.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation unit that investigates genocide and war crimes, and other agencies, hope to soon get a more detailed account of what happened at Hospital 601 from Caesar, officials said. Some U.S. officials want to use Caesar’s photographs, which show bodies that appear to have been strangled, beaten or disfigured, to build a case for a potential war-crimes prosecution of the Assad regime. It is unclear when, if ever, such a case might be brought.

When the issue was debated in the White House in 2012 and 2013, many administration officials argued that a concerted push for an international war-crimes prosecution would undermine any chance for pursuing a negotiated settlement to Syria’s civil war, according to participants. Bringing an indictment would give Mr. Assad and his backers little incentive to back down, they said.

“For the administration, it is a double-edged sword,” said Frederic Hof, who served as a top Obama administration adviser on Syria, of the photographic evidence. “On the one hand, it’s going to illustrate perhaps better than anything heretofore the absolute horror of what’s going on. On the other side, it raises the inevitable question: What are we actually doing about it?”

Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of Syrian authorities had held them, according to a Syrian military-police photographer now outside of Syria. Faces have been obscured at photo source’s request.

 

 

A White House official said the administration has long supported efforts to gather evidence of international crimes in Syria and earlier this year backed a United Nations Security Council resolution to refer war-crimes allegations to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That resolution was vetoed by Russia and China.

Syria has dismissed Caesar’s photographs as fabrications. In January, before U.S. investigators judged the photos authentic, Syria’s Ministry of Justice said many of the dead shown in the photos were civilians and soldiers killed by “terrorist groups.” It branded Caesar a fugitive lacking credibility, and said the photo trove was part of a campaign instigated by enemies of the nation. Syrian officials at the U.N. didn’t respond to requests for further comment.

Caesar, a high-school dropout from Damascus who has told U.S. officials he is in his 40s, was conscripted into the Syrian military, where he specialized in crime-scene photography. He told investigators he eventually became head of the division that photographed bodies for government records. It was part of Syria’s system, similar to those run by governments around the world, to document civilian and military deaths.

Caesar and the other photographers on his team were stationed at the military-police headquarters in Damascus, he told investigators. In more peaceful times, he was accompanied by a doctor and by a member of the Syrian judiciary whenever he went to take pictures of crime scenes and accidents.

“We had this routine,” Caesar said, according to a person present at his questioning. “As the revolution started out, we continued that same routine.” It was the body count and the venues that changed.

Initially, the Syrian government took many of the bodies of activists to a military hospital in Damascus known as Tishreen, or 607, he told investigators. Tishreen also was the site of military funerals for top Syrian officers, according to activists working with Caesar. Because the military didn’t want the bodies of activists and officers taken to the same facility, it decided to make 601 the central collection point for activists’ bodies, according to investigators who debriefed Caesar.

As the government stepped up its crackdown, Caesar told investigators, he and his team snapped pictures of between 15 and 20 bodies a day. In those early months, bodies were identified by name, he said.

Bodies were brought to 601 from 24 Syrian prisons and laid out in what Caesar and activists described to investigators as the hospital’s auto-repair warehouse.

It isn’t clear from the photos where the people were killed. U.S. investigators believe most died at government detention facilities because they appeared to have been dead for hours or days. A series of photographs taken on Nov. 1, 2012, show a prisoner, apparently alive, grasping a gloved hand before later turning up dead, according to officials who reviewed Caesar’s archive.

Caesar told investigators he didn’t have political affiliations and that before the war he never thought much about his job snapping pictures of the dead. “It was his day job,” said an activist who helped him escape. “He did what he was ordered to do.”

But as the bodies piled up and evidence of torture became more pronounced, Caesar’s attitude began to change. He confided in a close relative who knew activists working with the opposition, and in the summer of 2011 Caesar agreed to start smuggling photographs out of the hospital.

Caesar downloaded the images onto a government computer at his office and stored them on thumb drives that he hid in his shoes and passed to the opposition, Caesar and defectors working with him told investigators.

In October 2011, with the death toll in the prison system rising, the Syrian government introduced a numerical system to track the dead, according to Caesar’s account. Earlier pictures showed bodies marked with names. New ones showed numbers.

The numbers—written on white cards and taped to the bodies, or written directly on foreheads, arms and chests—provided a running count of how many had been killed, U.S. investigators believe.

Cherif Bassiouni, who chaired several United Nations war-crimes investigation commissions and teaches at DePaul University, reviewed Caesar’s photographs on behalf of the Syrian opposition and studied Syria’s use of numbers to identify bodies. He said the record-keeping system bore similarities to the method used by Soviet intelligence services in the 1950s.

Mr. Bassiouni said the Syrian government, like the Soviets, assigned prisoners a unique number when they were alive and a separate one when they died. In Nazi Germany, prisoners received only one number, which stayed with them in life and in death, he said.

The system appeared designed to maintain internal military discipline and track which branch of the military did what, Mr. Bassiouni said.

Last year, Syrian officers added two Arabic letters into the numeric system to indicate when the body count had surpassed 5,000 and 10,000, investigators concluded based on Caesar’s account and an analysis of the photos. It may have been a way to disguise the scale of the killing to anyone who doesn’t know how the record-keeping works, Mr. Bassiouni said.

The State Department’s Mr. Rapp has said the Syrian system stood out from recent mass killings in Rwanda and Liberia because of the level of documentation.

Defectors, former patients and local residents said 601 also functioned as a hospital for sick prisoners. Before a prisoner would be sent to 601, guards would write a number on his or her forehead, according to two Hospital 601 detainees who were there at different times in 2013.

“Forget your name. You’re now this number,” one former prisoner now living in Europe recalled being told by a guard.

The former prisoner, Mazen Besais Hamada, said he was blindfolded and loaded onto an ambulance in January 2013 for the drive to the hospital from the detention center where he was held. Mr. Hamada said he was given the number 1,858.

Conditions inside the hospital were gruesome, according to survivor accounts and witness reports compiled by Syrian human-rights groups, including the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, which is now based in Turkey.

“If you were at a demonstration, you would prefer to be shot and killed instead of shot and injured and taken to 601,” said Qutaiba Idlbi, a 24-year-old Syrian activist who said he was twice arrested and tortured by the regime before fleeing to the U.S. and seeking asylum.

Both Mr. Hamada and another former patient at the hospital described beds containing as many as four prisoners. They said they had to step over dead bodies in the morning to use the bathroom, where guards temporarily stored the corpses. Mr. Hamada said he eventually was freed by a judge.

A former surgeon at the Tishreen military hospital, where activists’ bodies initially were sent, said in an interview that doctors weren’t allowed to know patients’ names—only the numbers they were assigned—because the regime was concerned doctors might recognize a family name and reach out to relatives. The doctor said when a patient died, the family name was disclosed so the doctor could prepare a death certificate. He said the doctors were required to cite “a heart attack, a stroke, a normal medical reason,” even if they knew the cause of death was torture.

The doctor’s account of preparing misleading death certificates is consistent with information collected by activists.

By 2013, Caesar’s team was photographing between 50 and 60 bodies a day at 601, he told investigators.

Caesar began to worry when his bosses at military-police headquarters told him they wanted him to start training another photographer to take over his slot, according to activists working with him. Caesar started to suspect that the regime was on to him.

Last summer, shortly before a chemical-weapons attack attributed by Western nations to the Assad regime killed upward of 1,400 Damascus residents, Caesar told opposition contacts he wanted to leave the country. Syria has denied responsibility for the chemical attack.

To throw off the regime while Caesar was smuggled out of the country, the opposition Free Syrian Army faked the photographer’s death, according to David Crane, a former war-crimes prosecutor who has interviewed Caesar, and activists who were involved.

All told, Caesar helped smuggle more than 50,000 pictures out of Syria—his own and many others he downloaded that were taken by other photographers, according to activists working with him.

Working through the images, some of which show the same bodies from different angles, activists have identified around 6,700 individual victims so far. A senior U.S. official said the numbering system shown in the photos “is consistent with there being more than 10,000 victims.”

In January, a six-member international team of experts interviewed Caesar and examined the photos for any signs they were faked to discredit the Syrian regime. In a report presented to the U.N., the group concluded the photos were genuine.

The senior U.S. official said a separate American analysis of around 27,000 of the images turned up “no evidence of forgery or falsification in the pictures themselves.” The U.S. and other Western governments are expecting to see another 25,000 photos.

Mr. Crane, a member of the legal team that scrutinized the photos presented to the U.N., said “the last time we saw this kind of bureaucratic processing of humans was at Nuremberg.”

—Jess Bravin contributed to this article.

Write to Adam Entous at [email protected] and Dion Nissenbaum at [email protected]