Inside the Dabbagh Trial #1

TRIAL OF ALI MAMLOUK, JAMIL HASSAN AND ABDEL SALAM MAHMOUD

OR THE “DABBAGH TRIAL”

Court of Appeal – Paris, France

Hearing Date: May 21, 2024

 CAUTION: Some testimony includes descriptions of torture.

Note that this summary is not a verbatim transcript of the trial; it is merely an unofficial summary of the proceedings.

Throughout this summary, [information located in brackets are notes from our trial monitor] and “information placed in quotes are statements made by the witness, judges or counsel.” The names and identifying information of witnesses have been redacted.

[Note: SJAC continues to provide a summary of the proceedings while redacting certain details to protect witness privacy and to preserve the integrity of the trial.]

Highlights: SJAC’s 1^st trial monitoring report details day one of the trial of Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud in Paris, France. On the first trial day, the presiding judge made an opening statement, and three expert witnesses gave their testimony. Two experts are University Professors who conducted research related to Syria. One expert is a journalist who wrote a book about the Ceasar file.

Day 01 – May 21, 2024

Presiding Judge Raviot’s Opening Remarks and Reading of the indictment

[Trial monitor missed the first 2-3 minutes where Judge Raviot started presenting the trial schedule]

Judge Raviot listed the names of the witnesses and emphasized that they may not attend the hearing until they have testified. A special room is reserved for witnesses, he stressed. Civil parties would be heard on Thursday afternoon as well as Mazen Darwich. Judge Raviot asked if the schedule suited the General Attorney and the Civil Parties.

Judge Raviot then summarized the facts as described in the indictment drawn up by the examining magistrates and handed down March 29, 2023. He specified the indictment does not reflect his opinion.

On October 3, 2015, Mr. Obeida Dabbagh, a French-Syrian national, was heard by the OCLCH [French Police Office for international crimes investigations] as part of a preliminary investigation following the exploitation of a file consisting of photos of Bashar Al-Assad’s crimes, namely the Ceasar file. Obeida Dabbagh mentioned the situation of his brother and nephew, both missing on November 3 and 4, 2013. On October 5, 2015, a preliminary investigation [conducted by the prosecution] was launched on counts of enforced disappearance, followed on October 27, 2016 by the opening of a judicial investigation [conducted by two investigative magistrates] against unknown persons for acts of torture and complicity in torture, enforced disappearance, complicity in enforced disappearance, and crimes against humanity committed in Syria since November 2013.

[Presiding judge Raviot was speaking slowly to facilitate translation]

The Ligue des droits de l’homme [Human Rights League], the Fédération internationale pour les droits humains [International Federation for Human Rights or FIDH] and the Centre syrien pour les médias et la liberté d'expression [Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression or SCM] became civil parties to the case. On September 6, 2018, the civil parties sent death certificates, in which Mazen and Patrick were declared dead respectively on November 25, 2017 and January 25, 2014. The certificates were issued on August 1, 2018. Obeida Dabbagh also submitted information related to the expulsion of the Dabbagh family from their residence in Damascus.

That led to adding supplementary counts of manslaughter and complicity in these crimes, willful injury to life as a crime against humanity, complicity in enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity committed between November 2013 and the present day, as well as the war crimes of extortion and concealment and fencing [recel] of extortion.

During the judicial investigation, a wide range of information was gathered:

• various documentation from NGOs and associations (CIJA, IIIM, Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, SCM, UK-based Syrian Human Rights Network, etc.);
  • among this documentation, the investigative magistrates received the Caesar file and a German expert report on the subject [Rothschild report];
• testimonies from diplomats, journalists and Syrian nationals, victims and former officials of the regime who had defected and given their testimony.

Background of the case

After its independence in 1946, Syria became a parliamentary republic. That was followed by a Coup which gave Hafez Al-Assad access to the presidency. He was succeeded by Bashar Al-Assad in 2000. According to a report dated November 23, 2011 of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Syria had a population of 22 million, of which 74% Sunni, 10% Alawites, 3% Shiia other than Alawites, 10% Christian and 3% Druze. The Assad family belonged to the minority of the Alawite community.

In early March 2011, a protest movement led to bloody repression and arbitrary arrests by the regime. Intelligence services were omnipresent in society and played a key role in this crackdown. All services were connected to the Office of National Security, directly linked to the President.

There were four separate intelligence services. All these services, according to the investigative judge, were regularly involved in abuses (arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, etc.). 215,000 Syrian citizens were arrested according to the Syrian network report, and 80,000 disappeared. This was considered evidence of institutionalized and organized practices. A policy of expropriation and spoliation of the property of missing Syrians was also carried out. Regarding missing persons, bodies were not returned to families and death certificates started to be issued to conceal circumstances and place of death. From May 2018, hundreds of those death certificates were sent to families. They included alleged causes of death, such as heart attack and respiratory arrest.

The Dabbaghs had French-Syrian nationality. The mother of Mazen Dabbagh was French. Mazen had three brothers, Obeida and FM5 who live in France, and FM7 who lives in Germany. Their father Saleh held positions in the Syrian government. Mazen was married to FM1, with whom he had two children, a son named Patrick Abdel Kader and a daughter named FM2.

Obeida Dabbagh is married to Hanane and is a plaintiff in the case. According to the judicial information, Mazen studied at the French secular mission until the baccalaureate and after that, he studied French literature. He lived in Dubai for five years, where he worked in an airport catering business. Upon his return to Syria, he worked at the French school in Damascus as an advisor and then a principal education advisor. His son was a 2nd-year psychology student.

Patrick was arrested late in the evening of November 3, and his father the following day. The Brother-in-law FM3 was also arrested that day and released two days later. FM3’s testimony showed that he and Mazen had been taken to Mezzeh, not far from the airport. FM3 related they had been standing for over 14 hours, hands tied behind their back and head down to the ground. The men were then reunited, and the son confirmed to the father that he had been tortured. The three men were separated on November 5. FM3 was released on November 6, 2013.

Obeiba reported that his sister-in-law had come to Damascus to try to obtain their release. She paid $15,000 to a contact to obtain their transfer and this contact then informed her that Mazen and Patrick had died four months after their arrest, so in March 2014. The contact did not know the reason for their arrest. Mazen’s brother FM5 thought the reason for their arrest was his involvement in a camp of Palestinian refugees.

On September 6, 2018, death certificates were sent to the investigative magistrate by the civil parties. Obeida Dabbagh had obtained this information from a lawyer in Damascus. The deaths would have occurred on November 25, 2017, for Mazen and January 21, 2014, for Patrick Abdel Kader. These documents were received as part of a large-scale campaign of sending death certificates. They made no mention of the cause or place of death.

Judge Raviot then focused on the expropriation procedure. On July 6, 2018, during a new audition, Obeida Dabbagh specified that Abdel Salam Mahmoud had requisitioned his brother Mazen's house in July 2016 to live there. Each of the four brothers had a share in this house. Mazen's share had been seized by judgment to the benefit of the Air Force Intelligence Services. The wife and daughter were required to leave the premises at the end of 2016.

On September 26, 2018, Obeida's counsel handed over documents related to the eviction from this property: a rental contract from the Damascus public finance center to the benefit of the Air Force Intelligence Services which specified the rental concerned living quarters and cost 30 euros per year, during a period of 5 years from July 26, 2016 to July 26, 2021. These documents also contained a photo of the eviction notification in favor of the Syrian Ministry of Finance that hung on the house after the wife and daughter had left.

FM1 and FM2 declined the invitation to be heard by the French magistrate for fear of reprisals.

The investigative magistrates determined that the Air Force Intelligence Services were responsible for these disappearances which were documented thanks to many elements, including detailed reports of the organizations quoted before. The Al-Mezzeh prison was under the authority of this service and could hold up to 15,000 inmates. Torture practices were systematic.

The investigative magistrates also determined a hierarchical chain whose responsibility could be engaged. Ali Mamlouk was Head of General Intelligence and State Security. He was born in Amara, a Damascus Neighborhood, on February 19, 1946, and became head of the National Security Office, the highest authority, in July 2012. He led this office until at least until June 2019. He is considered one of the main executors of policies and decisions of the Presidency to repress dissent.

Jamil Hassan was Director of the Air Force Intelligence Services. He originated from the western province of Homs and was an Alawite. He made his career in the Air Force. He was a private assistant to Ali Mamlouk and in 2009, he became Chief of the Air Force Intelligence and remained in that position until 2019. He directed this department at the time when Patrick and Mazen were arrested and, also when they died. Numerous testimonies mentioned his presence at the site of Al-Mezzeh.

Abdel Salam Mahmoud held the position of Director of the Air Force Investigations Branch before March 2011 and at least until November 2012. There was no indication that he left his post after this date. He was mentioned in a French decree dated June 7, 2018, applying a penalty system [to Syrian personalities] and designated as having used an intermediary to extort $15,000 by dangling information to Mazen’s wife. He reportedly still lived in the Dabbagh house. The last contract for the house stated that the occupant should be an Air Force member. Therefore, he surely was a member of this service at least until 2016. Two of the three witnesses submitted by the CIJA said they had been interrogated by Abdel Salam Mahmoud.

Three arrest warrants were issued on March 19, 2023, and the judicial information ended on March 31, 2023.

Criminal liability determined by the investigative judges

Abundant documentation existed [to attest criminal liability of the defendant], such as testimonies. The IIIM, various NGOs and journalists also confirmed that the responsibility of the highest dignitaries was implicated, particularly the one of the President of Syria and of the heads of all Intelligence services under his authority.

By declining the policy of massive repression of demonstrations and opponents, Ali Mamlouk contributed to the commission of international crimes from 2011. He was head of the Office of National Security when the arrests and death occurred. At that time, he was the supreme authority of the Intelligence services, his direct superior being Bashar Al-Assad. Documents showed that he had extensive knowledge of civilians whom he described as terrorists, and that he was a man of the field, moving around in different branches.

Jamil Hassan was chief of the Air Force Intelligence. He was a superior described as particularly powerful and involved in repression. As such, he received daily intelligence reports. Witnesses described his presence at Al-Mezzeh airport and spoke of his power of life and death over detainees. Jamil Hassan called himself "a cruel man". He would give instructions to his subordinates and was necessarily aware of torture practices because they were carried out by his departments.

Abdel Salam Mahmoud led the Air Force Investigations Branch after March 2011. He was accused by witnesses of having ordered torture on detainees of Al-Mezzeh. He was described as particularly cruel; his service having turned into a slaughterhouse during the summer of 2011.

Judge Raviot then mentioned the chapter of the order for referral of the investigative magistrates that focused on immunities. None of the defendants enjoyed the following immunities:

• Immunity ratione personae granted to President, Prime Minister or Minister of Foreign Affairs by international custom;
• Immunities under the Vienna Conventions of 1961 and 1963 concerning diplomatic and consular staff;
• Immunity ratione materiae to which any public official is entitled to during his or her duties if they fall within the scope of a State sovereignty, as it would subject one State to the law of another. Mere acts of management are not covered by these immunities.

The indictment included a discussion to exclude these individuals from theses immunities. Judge Raviot stressed that the national judge must apply positive and customary law, which in addition to the principle of immunities also includes criminal responsibility for international crimes.

Applicable counts

In accordance with article 212-1 of the French criminal code, crimes against humanity must be committed in a specific context, namely a concerted plan or a generalized attack against civilians. There is a collective dimension of the crimes that can be determined by several elements like the use of all levels of the administrative and judicial chains, photo-taking of corpses, organization of the disappearance of bodies, organized and collective nature of torture, existence of a specific discourse and of media propaganda, number of victims, abundance of existing documentation from the IIIM, etc. Numerous organizations confirmed the involvement of the chiefs. It was established that the facts are part of a concerted plan to ensure the regime's survival.

Judge Raviot added that the existence of a widespread and systematic attack is a necessary element and that there is an alternative criterion for the nature of the attack: it is of considerable gravity if carried out collectively. The attacks become systematic if they present a certain degree of organization, as fortuitousness is unlikely when the acts are carefully organized. The figures from international organizations give an idea of the scale.

On August 18, 2016, a note from Amnesty International on the number of deaths in custody documented 12,200 deaths between March 15, 2011, and December 31, 2015. 17,723 people died in detention, a figure including documented as well as undocumented deaths. The photos of the Ceasar file support the widespread and systematic nature of the attack.

An expert report from the French Directorate-General for External Security [DGSE] on the Caesar file in 2015 concluded that the documents were trustworthy. The witness, Ceasar, a former soldier interviewed anonymously explained that he documented the regime's crimes. Among the photos were 23 bodies of people qualified as terrorists following a demonstration in Dara’a. From 2012 onward, the number of bodies increased significantly and Ceasar no longer went to hospital, but to a military hospital. He then went to a garage near Al-Mezzeh where each body was marked with two numbers, one on the forehead and one on a piece of paper. On the forehead, there was the security branch code and the detainee number, and on the paper was the number given at the morgue. The corpses presented signs of emaciation compatible with hunger as a means of torture [etc.]. The investigation team concluded that this was clearly evidence of torture on detainees as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Syrians, the civilian population being the main target.

Judge Raviot then mentioned the analysis of a precedent case law in Germany that the investigative magistrates referred to. On February 24, 2021, the judgment by the Highest Court of Koblenz considered that the events that occurred since 2011 represented a generalized and systematic attack against the civilian population. The security forces had used violence against peaceful demonstrators.

Judge Raviot then elaborated on the counts against the three defendants, in the order redacted by the two investigative magistrates [the counts are the same for each defendant, but Judge Raviot read them separately]:

• Between November 3, 2013, and August 1, 2018, complicity in the crimes against humanity of imprisonment, deprivation of physical liberty, torture, enforced disappearance and willful taking of life to the detriment of Mazen and Patrick Dabbagh. The complicity is characterized by provocation to these crimes and giving instructions  to commit them. As hierarchical superior, Ali Mamlouk allowed his subordinates to commit these crimes without taking all possible measures to prevent their execution and/or refer to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution.
• Between January 19, 2014, and October 9, 2018, complicity in extortion and concealment and fencing [recel] of extortion of property located in Abu Rumaneh in Damascus. The seizure and confiscation were obtained following the imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance and death of Mazen Dabbagh and the property was then made available to the Air Force Intelligence Services. These acts were committed against individuals protected by the international law of armed conflicts and were not justified by military necessity. As such, they represent a war crime.

Attorney General Viguier then mentioned documents on immunities that were sent today for civil parties: the translated decision of the German Federal Court of Justice of February 21, 2024, the ruling of the International Court of Justice of November 16, 2023 (of the case raised by Canada and the Netherland against Syria), the minutes of the hearing of [name redacted], a professor at [the University of] Nanterre from December 7, 2022, the minutes of the witness hearing of another University professor, and the French translation of the qualifications in the decision of the Highest regional court of Koblenz of February 24, 2021.

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 Expert Witness 1 Ziad Majed (Majed) Testimony

Majed who was born in Beirut in May 1970, is a University Professor [at the American University in Paris] and currently resides in France. He has known the defendants since they are famous members of the Syrian Regime, including in Lebanon. Presiding Judge Raviot deduced that Majed has no personal or professional ties with the defendant and is a context witness. Majed was sworn in as a witness.

He explained he would develop his analysis around three themes: the creation and construction of the Assad regime, the years of Bashar Al-Assad and the centrality of the prison system.

1.       Creation and construction of the Assad regime

Syria gained its independence in 1943, and the French troops left in 1946. From 1958 to 1961, the United Arab Republic was created jointly with Egypt. The Baath Party determined that the Arab nation must be unified once again after the impacts of colonialism and the Ottoman Empire. It seized power on March 8, 1963. Hafez [Al-Assad] was one of those who orchestrated the coup and oversaw the Air Force, hence his importance and the development of the Air Force intelligence services later.

In 1966, Hafez organized a second coup and removed the historical leaders of the Baath party. He started as a Minister of Defense, controlling the army and security services. In 1970, Hafez led a third coup, ousting his former comrades and consolidating his grip on power. From there, he kept two obsessions: first, to build a system impervious to any other coup and second, to stay in power as long as possible.

In 1971, Assad became a President with absolute power. He built this power according to three philosophies:

1. Loyal social base through confessionalism. He launched a narrative on the historical marginalization of the Alawites to transform the community politically and make people believe that Alawites are protected by Assad.       

2. Excessive use of violence. Alawite leaders were often enemies among themselves, so Hafez could set the different services against each other. Not all the leaders were Alawites, but the very loyal majority were from his community.

3. Economic laissez faire. He enacted liberalization for some, like merchants and bourgeois of the big cities, while saying that politics is not their field.

On the top of that, he used foreign policy to hide the Syrian population from the rest of the world. Decision-makers were content to talk about Syria’s role in Lebanon, Iraq, the Palestinian question and so on.

After the occupation of the Golan [Heights] following the 6-days war in 1967, Hafez claimed to have won the October War in 1973 and would be able to rebuild Syria. In 1976, the invasion of Lebanon brought money into the Syrian economy. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was also an important moment for Hafez, as he formed an alliance that enabled him to mediate between the Iranians and the Gulf states. Iran’s cooperation with Hafez gave them important access to the Mediterranean Sea.

This puts him at the heart of the regional game, giving the regime more life and concealing what was going on at home. While the population steadily increased, political developments were confronted with unprecedented violence. Since 1963, the regime had imposed a state of emergency. Nevertheless, it allowed certain parties to remain active, namely the Communist Party, the Nationalist Party and other formations under Baath leadership.

Between 1979 and 1982-83, the Communist Party was divided and eventually criminalized. Then, other parties opposed to Moscow started to oppose the regime, like the Muslim Brotherhood. A confrontation with the regime began in 1979 which resulted in attacks on army barracks, campaigns to arrest opponents, etc. The law stipulated that membership to the Muslim Brotherhood could lead to the death penalty. The communists, who withdrew from the alliance to the regime, were arrested.

In 1980, two massacres were perpetrated when hundreds of prisoners from the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups were executed at the prison of Tadmor. In 1982, in Hama, tens of thousands of people were killed or were forcibly disappeared. It was a traumatic event, because the regime crossed all the red lines of violence. Hafez Al-Assad wanted everyone to have blood on their hands to force them to remain together.

After that, the walls of fear went up. Thousands disappeared and were imprisoned. Society became silent, but the opposition did not completely die out. Many activists were exiled abroad but continued their work. Resistance to the government still existed, but opposition was not commonly expressed in society.

Many Lebanese disappeared in Syria during the war between Hafez Al-Assad and Yasser Arafat.

As Iraq invaded Kuwait, Hafez Al-Assad allied himself with the USA against Saddam. Previously, there had been foreign condemnation of some events: the death of Michel Seurat [French researcher], hostage-takings, the assassination of a French ambassador to Lebanon by Damascus, etc. But the stakeholders were now obligated to negotiate with Hafez Al-Assad. After [the invasion of] Kuwait, he sent troops and in exchange obtained almost total control over Lebanon.

In the 90s, Hafez Al-Assad prepared his son Bassel to eternalize power, but he died in a car accident in 1994. The father then summoned his second son, and in 6 years, he removed certain heavyweights who could threaten Bashar and surrounded him with loyal advisors including Maher Al-Assad and the Makhlouf family. In 2000, Bashar was only 34 years-old but the constitution stipulated that the president had to be over 40 years old to become president, so the constitution was amended.

2.       Bashar Al-Assad’s years

Bashar inherited a robust system. He tried to show that his youth was an opportunity for openness. This was a message mainly addressed to Westerners to show they were alike. But the only thing that would change was the privatization of parts of the economic sector, which benefited his cousins. The image of a young couple [Bashar and his wife, Asma] was also built up, to distance himself from his military father who rarely smiled. During the Damascus Spring, there was a blossoming of political salons and associations working to organize public meetings and discuss politics, the end of the state of emergency, the return of exiles, and the release of political prisoners. But after a year, nothing had changed. Starting in February 2001, there was a crackdown on the Damascus Spring. The organizers of the salons were arrested and imprisoned, on the same counts as always (threat to sovereignty, etc.).

The regime continued to impose itself through violence. A series of assassinations in Beirut targeted opponents of Damascus, including Hariri.

In 2005-2006, after the Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change, another series of arrests took place and well-known personalities were imprisoned. Sheikh Ahmad, who had symbolic authority in Sufi circles was assassinated, the Kurds who also rose up [in Syria] were repressed. In 2008, guards at the prison of Sednaya massacred detainees for having attempted an uprising.

In 2011, few people expected an uprising in Syria, but surprisingly in March 2011 the revolution broke out and remained peaceful for nearly two years. The people were peacefully calling for the fall of the regime, demanding accountability, etc. Many Syrians were documenting [what was happening], hoping to avoid reliving Hama, which was a massacre behind closed doors, and they hoped to be protected now that the world could see them. This didn't work. Torture expanded on an industrial scale, and terrifying testimonies from former inmates came out. The prison system was the backbone of the repression.

Expert witness Ziad Majed differentiated several aspects in the use of violence:

Violence in Syria continued to grow. Majed never thought violence was indiscriminate, but targeted, in accordance with a philosophy. For example, representatives who could have played a political role on a national scale were assassinated because their discourse wasn't just local, communitarian and rural. They could speak to all Syrians. The regime’s aim was to weaken the national aspects of the revolution.

Violence had a confessional aspect. While few killings occurred in Kurdish, Druze and Christian areas, the regime targeted Sunni rural areas, in marginalized categories. For example, it targeted Yarmouk, Jobar, etc. In these districts, the regime killed hundreds, while in the other locations, it conducted targeted assassinations without carrying out massacres. This illustrated the desire to create a confessional narrative; by showing that Sunnis are the ones who are revolting. This way, it gave Syrians the choice between the Assad regime, which takes care of the communities, or the Islamists. The sieges of Yarmouk, Al-Ghouta, East Aleppo, Homs, etc. were all part of the logic of crushing a population considered marginalized.

Majed interpreted the chemical attacks and bombing as an attempt to show that Assad still enjoyed absolute power and impunity, and that he could even cross Obama's red line. This was a message to his own society that he had complete control, at the same time a message to his social base to show that he could even gas them without anything happening.

In 2013, waves of Syrians began seeking refuge elsewhere. It was no coincidence that Daesh [ISIS] emerged in Syria and Iraq, along with the Baath party [i.e. the Baath party in power represented no obstacle to the emergence of ISIS]. Syrians faced major issues during this period including violence, the departure of millions of Syrians, internal displacement, and territorial fragmentation.

As this time, it was common for prisoners released by the regime to became targets of jihadist recruitment, making Syria a hub for jihadists who wanted to go and fight [in Syria and Iraq]. The regime was sure that jihadists or recruiters it released after 2011 were consolidating these groups.

Another form [of violence] was sexual violence that the regime adopted on a large scale. This crime paralyzed and shattered all parts of society; the victims, their families, and their social environment. In a provoking series of rapes, the idea was also to show Syrians that they were the equivalent of serfs in the Middle Ages and were property of the regime.

In evidentiary videos, one could often see jailers asking people to say that Assad was their god.

3.       Syria, a large prison

The prison environment is where the power of the regime manifested itself in its most absolute form. Its administrative organization [short interruption of translation in Arabic due to technical issue] shows the will to control and measure everything.

Prison is also a way of paralyzing an entire society. With thousands of people incarcerated, families would not dare to speak out because there was always hope their close ones could come back. Most notably, a whole economy is built around this notion, with promises made to families not to torture their loved ones, and to send them [the imprisoned family members] food, while they were often already dead. This mafia-like economy is linked to the regime.

A culture of rumors exists. Nobody knows who is dead, where they are, or where they might be transferred to. These rumors cause psychological damage. Families are given death certificates without the bodies ever being returned, preventing mourning and leaving them with false hopes that the information may be untrue. Rumors cause despair and expectations.

The security services tortured and deported many people, which remains engraved in the memory of all Syrians. In a documentary film, a Syrian opponent said that [under Hafez Al-Assad] jailers told prisoners that they had the right to kill 10% of prisoners, and beyond that, they had to explain why. This opponent further explained that under Bashar Al-Assad, these quotas no longer existed, and the impact of torture had become limitless.

With documentation from books, documentaries, debates and the testimonies of Syrians who have recounted the horror, Majed believed that the fight against impunity became increasingly possible. This session is the beginning of the fight against impunity that Syrians have been waiting for.

Presiding Judge Raviot questioning of Majed

Judge Raviot asked if, when Majed mentioned a mafia-style economy in regard to the regime, he considered it to be part of an organization. Majed explained that there is a systemic policy. For instance, law No. 10 which passed in May 2018, allowed the regime to reappropriate the property of people who could not prove their ownership, knowing that millions are displaced. There is a systemic policy in relation to property, and there is a laissez-faire attitude that is supported and facilitated regarding the possibility left to the families of generals [to take the property of detainees]. Law No. 10 confirms the will to steal and take people's property. Many videos, including pro-regime ones, showed celebrations of the seizing of property belonging to people in their own homes. To create a more confessional division, these are called Sunni markets.

Judge Raviot inquired about the practice of issuing death certificates from May or June 2018 and wondered why the Syrian regime was doing this when it hadn't done so before. Majed considered this to be based on Russian advice. After the last major military battle in 2017-2018, the regime regained control of Dara'a, the suburbs around Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs. The Russian regime would have advised to close the files of missing persons. Another version is that the regime thought that normalization would be possible with Arab and Western countries, so it wanted to lighten the lists of the missing persons. In fact, normalization began afterwards, but did not develop further, especially not with the West.

Judge Raviot was unsure whether it came under Majed’s competence, but he wanted to have information about the number of people who may have been incarcerated since 2011. Majed replied that there had been an estimated 6 to 7 million internally displaced, and about the same number of Syrian refugees abroad. Departures from Syria are becoming increasingly difficult. Regarding detainees, Majed found it very difficult to establish a precise figure, but Syrian organizations have documented disappearances and consider that today there are around 100 thousand missing persons, between 90 and 110 thousand depending on the source. There are names and dates, so it's accurate. Majed emphasized it is probably in the 100s of thousands but cannot affirm an exact figure.

Judge Simeoni questioning of Majed

Judge Simeoni asked Majed if he thought that the Syrian press was reporting on the trial. Majed said he tried to look on the internet but could not find anything. But Majed knew there have been comments, insults, and threats on social networks. He hasn’t seen anything from the regime’s side but in the Lebanese media, Majed saw a lot of articles and real coverage. A large part of the Syrian population do not read the Syrian state media to stay informed, because they know it is propaganda. So, when Syrians want information, they turn to the news sites and channels.

Civil Parties’ Counsels Bectarte and Baudouin questioning of Majed

Counsel Bectarte thanked Majed for the clarity of the details he shared. She mentioned his words about Bashar Al-Assad’s rise to power and the years leading up to the revolution in 2011. She asked Majed if he could talk more specifically about civil society, the landscape of Syrian NGOs, and associations, and explain if they existed and had room to maneuver. Majed inquired if she referred to the period from the start of Bashar Al-Assad’s presidency until 2011, which Bectarte confirmed.

Majed stated the leaders of illegal activities, who were intellectuals and political actors and who had been imprisoned, began to write after their release, such as in the Lebanese press. Sometimes, they were still threatened or arrested. Among the intellectuals, courage and generosity lasted. Among jurists, documentation work was carried out and Majed mentioned Razan Zeitouneh. Lawyers also conducted activities aiming at widening the space of law and freedoms. In the town of Darayya, Sherbagi's initiative  [trial monitor unsure about spelling] was launched with the aim of creating political awareness without alarming the services of the regime. Cultural initiatives also emerged. Press releases were published from time to time, like one calling for the end of the state of emergency (press release of ‘99), one from filmmakers, which was extremely important, etc. all in 2000 and 2001. Important work was done by committees that began to organize in several regions to create networks but were soon arrested and criminalized by the regime. From 2011 onwards, all this flourished again, with coordinating committees in towns and villages, activities on social networks, groups of lawyers set up to defend those arrested, etc. People thought this society was stifled and muzzled, but there was a lot of energy and courage. This lasted for a few years from 2011, and continued in the Syrian diaspora, where there are lots of programs, particularly regarding documentation and the work of many jurists.

Bectarte recalled Majed’s reference to four intelligence services and asked him to give more details on these services, with a focus on the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Majed explained there were several departments, often with transfers between each. Sometimes the head of the department was not necessarily the one who decided. He described the intelligence network of Syria as:

• The Intelligence which deals with foreign affairs: in the Syrian case, it is very powerful because it manages relations with Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey, and is responsible for blackmail and operations. It has been entrusted to Assad family relatives and has played a crucial role in the system.
• Internal security is ensured by several systems: political security, military intelligence and many administrations, which also enjoy important powers. There are branches in the cities with varying degrees of authority.
• The Air Force Intelligence Service is the most important department. In 1966, the second Baath party coup took place. In 1970, the Air Force was under the control of Hafez Al-Assad. It was this branch that enabled the seizure of power. Since 1971, Hafez Al-Assad became obsessed with staying in power and making other coups impossible he relied on the services of the Air Force Intelligence. Its members are extremely close to the Assad family and to power.     
• The Republican Guard also plays an extremely important role.

The Air Force Intelligence Service and the Republican Guard are the most powerful. The multiplication of services is very significant because it allows Assad to remain the arbiter. From time to time, “security reforms” were implemented, and in 2011, they created a coordination of these services under the National Security, also named the Office of National Security. There are arrest warrants from Lebanon accusing members of this office of sending bombs to assassinate Lebanese personalities.

Bectarte explained that Majed concluded his testimony by the investigative magistrate with a sentence that she wished to remind him of: “I'd like to make it clear that the impunity that has reigned so much in Syria and in the region is the main reason for nihilism. If it does not end, we will remain in [chaos]”.

Majed said that he always thought that impunity [rest of sentence unclear to TM]. There have never been trials and rarely any sanctions. Over time, the unpunished feel more and more powerful, because there are no red lines. As if the concept of the law was not designed to protect Syrians, which creates a perverse effect where those in charge can remain untouchable and can negotiate agreements with foreign players to stay in power. This creates a kind of culture that prevents implementation of a rule of law and the idea that people can be equal under the law, killing the whole question of citizenship. Majed added that, given what has happened in Syria, the rise of jihadist formations often used the argument that people are being killed anyway, and nobody is going to save them, not the law, not the international community, and not documentation. So, the only thing that can save people is to respond to violence with violence. These forces take advantage of [the absence of] any rule of law and justice. The unpunished in the region justify themselves in relation to each other, and this is a very important issue from a cultural and political perspective.

Regarding the country, which remains fragmented and locked, Counsel Baudouin asked Majed if he considered the regime to be now stabilized or still fragile and likely to topple over. He wanted to obtain some more contemporary analyses. Majed replied that Syria is a fragmented country, one area is controlled by the Assad Regime, mostly thanks to the Russians and Iranians. This zone covers about 65% of the territory, including the coastline and major cities. A second zone is controlled by Kurdish forces and the Americans, and covers 20% of the territory, including some medium-sized towns where the demography is not exclusively Kurdish. Tensions exist between different groups and demographics. Ten to 12% of the territory is controlled by various opposition forces. In this area, Idlib is controlled by Al-Nusra, which claims to have broken away from Al-Qaeda. There is a fourth zone in the south, the At Tanf desert, where opposition forces, trained to fight Daesh, are located and have conditioned the fight against Daesh on the fight against the regime. They are still there. A fifth zone corresponds to the Golan Heights annexed by the Israelis, but no one other than former U.S. President Donald Trump has recognized this annexation.

In every zone, the country is devastated by the campaigns of the regime and the Russians. The country is on its knees economically. The captagon economy is on the rise, being exported to the Gulf countries. These countries demanded a halt to imports in exchange for investment. Regarding the Syrian population, an estimated 60% to 80% are below the poverty line. Unemployment is extremely high, and the Syrian pound [lira] experienced a great loss of value. The earthquake amplified certain problems. Very little investments arrive in Syria in such a context, which means that the regime is increasingly allowing corruption to flourish among its own people and certain militias they had supported, whose members have not found their former jobs. So, from time to time, they set up checkpoints and demand money. The state structure is still based on mafia logic. Once again, the Syrian State mainly exercises its sovereignty in the prison system, while several non-Syrian air forces make good use of Syrian soil and while international relations are managed by others. The collapse of Lebanon does not help either. The economic situation is therefore weighing heavily [on the population], and the regime is looking for partners who will support investments. That is why normalization is a major issue.

Refugees outside don't seem to be welcome. Majed mentioned a quote by Bashar Al-Assad on the Presidency website, stating that the country seemed to be more homogenous now and expressing his delight about it. Bashar Al-Assad once spoke of a “cleansed Syria”. Conditions for the return of refugees have not been met and most of them do not wish to return. In the absence of law, there may be a settling of accounts when they return. It looks like the situation is set to remain like this for a long time.

Counsel Baudouin stressed that on several occasions, Majed said that Syria wanted to play an international role, which could distract from the seriousness of domestic problems. Today, Baudouin continued, we have the feeling that even though Assad is a pariah, the term normalization is spreading, even within French diplomacy, where he is once again considered a key player. Baudouin inquired whether this encouraged Bashar Al-Assad to continue with the same logic, particularly the prison system. Majed replied that normalization is happening with certain Arab countries. The Arab League started, with the Unified Arab Emirates and Bahrain, who never closed their embassies or consulates in Syria. Jordan and Saudi Arabia next normalized relations, hoping that Iran's expansion into Syria would be weakened. Integration into the Arab League was unsuccessful, as Syria's utility for Saudi Arabia decreased after the Saudi-Iranian reconciliation. Turkey continues to refuse reconciliation and controls more than a third of the Syrian population in Northeast Syria where three million people live. Another four to five million Syrians live in Turkey; there are no normalization dynamics.

As for the Europeans, unfortunate statements were made evoking political realism, but there has been no great progress toward normalization either. Voices are being raised that Bashar Al-Assad has information on the Jihadists that could be of interest to European intelligence. A link was made with Italy and with Western intelligence services. But Bashar Al-Assad cannot make up his mind without Russia and Iran. The Ceasar file and sanction measures, including the Captagon Act, play an important role at this level. The whole idea of normalizing with Bashar Al-Assad to contain his aggressiveness is an illusion. The whole history of Assad is one of blackmail which has never been successful; they reach compromises without delivering what is expected of them. There is no reason to believe that normalization is necessary. There is no haven to send refugees back to. In addition, normalizing with Assad would certainly send a message that what has happened is just a war, and the page can be turned to start again.

Presiding Judge Raviot asked if, with regard to the Ceasar file, Majed has any idea why the regime documented these deaths and if this documentation is still going on. Majed said that after Caesar, it became a state secret. But Majed thought that this philosophy is linked to a bureaucratic obsession that wants to show itself capable of managing the smallest details. With the use of numbers, dehumanization goes all the way. Through numbers, it is possible to understand the responsibilities of offices, branches and locations of death. This allows the regime to control its own interior and show that everything is under control and that nothing escapes the big boss. It is also a rather obsessive way of exercising power over bodies, over life. Judge Raviot wondered if the defection of this agent [Ceasar] had any impact on the organization of this bureaucracy. Majed said he has no idea about that.

Attorney General Viguier questioning of Majed

Prosecutor Viguier referred to the book Dans la tête de Bachar Al-Assad [In Bashar Al-Assad's head, written by Majed] which was added into proceedings. She explained Majed’s development on the intelligence services and quoted a part of the book on political security and military and air force intelligence, which are dedicated to providing air defense and embassy security. But they can intervene without coordination so that everything converges towards the president. She asked if it was completely unbelievable that these individuals, who were citizens, should end up in Al-Mazzeh [air force intelligence branch] when they had nothing to do with the air force. In Majed’s opinion, the intelligence services could operate when the regime was threatened. In 2011, the [air force intelligence services] were considered the most ferocious, the most capable of annihilating the regime's enemies. Assad and his brothers managed relations between the services. It was not uncommon to find citizens in prisons, run by these services, who were neither members of the military nor the air force. Just as the answer that was sent to Dara'a, intelligence services can intervene elsewhere. These services were given free rein on several occasions.

Prosecutor Viguier mentioned Syrian Legislative Decree 69 and inquired what Majed could say about the issue of impunity and the ban on investigations against members of the security services. Majed replied that the air force was known as the absolute horror, considered the most ferocious. For example, there are prisons originally dedicated to certain profiles, such as the Palestinian branch in Damascus for counterespionage. The Palestinian branch then became a terrible prison where Palestinians and others were held. There were modifications to the services’ authority according to necessity.

Considering impunity, Majed claimed that the idea was to make the leaders of these services' untouchable. The only agency who could do this was the presidency, which moved these leaders from one position to another. Sometimes a promotion could be a marginalization. Making someone an advisor to the president could be prestigious, but it could also be an opportunity to remove them from a certain department. Through this law and many other practices and measures, the idea was that the only one who has the right to touch these services and their head was the president. It was a way of showing that Bashar is in charge and that everything depends on his will.

Counsel Bectarte intervened to come back to the question of torture in detention centers. In pages 76 to 79 of the book, a passage addresses the death by torture practices on an industrial scale, the bureaucratic management of murder intended to show that it is organized by the State, the intent to terrorize their families, and the death certificates without return of their loved ones’ remains. Bectarte stressed that what Majed described corresponded almost exactly to what Mazen Dabbagh saw. She wondered if it is possible to speak of a state policy and if Majed has any idea of how this policy, established to break [people], became a state policy.

Majed explained that this passage is based on many testimonies from different periods, from the Assad father and son’s reign. Sometimes, torture occurred at the beginning of detention, sometimes during the whole time of detention. It took different forms like untreated diseases, prohibition of access to toilets, overcrowding leading to heart attacks, suffocation, etc. This showed that the scale went beyond the practice in one branch or under one officer or another, but that torture was a state practice. There are even terms that qualify one or other forms of torture, so it is all organized and completed within a framework, given that it occurred all over the Syrian territory. In addition, most people arrested after 2011 were not asked many questions. The ones who were asked for information while tortured were activists, for instance by pulling out their fingernails to ask for passwords to social networks accounts. Often, objectives were set at the start, but with time, all sorts of reasons could be evoked. The idea of Assad's Syria was to push people to write reports, even if most Syrians haven’t done so. It is all part of the state's culture of repression and these practices are not isolated.

Bectarte asked Majed to explain the difference between the detention centers of the Palestinian branch and Sednaya prison to enlighten the court on the prison system. Majed explained that this pre-2011 classical configuration was disrupted before 2011. Sednaya was like Aleppo and Homs where there were more civilian prisons. There were military prisons for other reasons. The Palestinian branch, and Tadmor were known as the most difficult, where members of leftist formations and of the Muslim Brotherhood were sent. There was a distribution map according to the profile of prisoners and what the prison had to manage. After 2011, detention centers were opened in buildings that had been converted into prisons. Civilian prisons were overcrowded, so anyone could be put in them [the detention centers]. Things changed but the most difficult branches remained Al-Mazzeh and all the military airports, and Sednaya, the Palestinian Branch and other branches identified with numbers, but which location is unknown. Majed said he couldn’t make a clear distinction from the information he has.

[A map of Syria showing its administrative regions, called governorates, was displayed]. Majed commented on the map and explained which areas were controlled by the regime, by Kurdish forces, and explained that areas in the south were used by the U.S.A to observe links between Iraq and Syria, and there was also the desert of At-Tanf, the Golan, etc. Majed mentioned the Russian military base on the coast and the presence of Iranian forces in regime-controlled areas.]

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Presiding Judge Raviot said he forgot to mention that in French law, one can try defendants who were never heard in the procedures and never touched by their convocation. In the case of today's defendants, they could have sent a lawyer to represent them. It is possible to try the defendants by a procedure of criminal default, which means that if a decision is taken, they can lodge an opposition, and this procedure becomes null and void and there is a new [first instance] judgment with the possibility of appeal. It is not up to the court to appoint lawyers to represent defendants in default trials.

Counsels of the civil parties expressed an issue with the headsets for Arabic speaking attendees, after the plaintiff indicated connection problems.

[proceedings were suspended at 1:00 PM and resumed at 2:26 PM]

******

Expert Witness 2 François Burgat (Burgat) Testimony

Presiding Judge Raviot reminded that law banned capture of images of the trial, and that the headsets must not be touched.

Burgat, who was born in 1948, is now 77 years old and currently retired from the CNRS [French National Center for Scientific Research] where he was a research director. He occupied the function of director of the French Near East Institute in Damascus. He now lives in Aix-en-Provence. Judge Raviot asked him if he knew the defendants. Burgat said not personally, but at least Ali Mamlouk is well known to those interested in Syria.

Burgat took an oath. Judge Raviot explained he was summoned by the Attorney General to testify before the court.

Burgat started by clarifying where he drew the information he will make today from. He was a resident in Damascus until January 2012, after the uprising started. A very small number of the French Embassy employees were allowed to stay, and then forced to leave in January 2012, after four years of presence. That's where Burgat capitalized off most of his knowledge. He then moved to Beirut, which was a privileged observatory of the Syrian crisis and where one could be particularly well informed. There, Burgat co-directed the writing of a book entitled Pas de printemps sur la Syrie [No Spring for Syria]. For a long time, there was a question mark [at the end of the title], which was then removed when the book was published. The directors made a point of talking to people who had witnessed the crisis firsthand. It is their voice Burgat tried to make heard. Before providing any analysis, Burgat presented three images to sum up his approach.

• In 2011, Burgat approached demonstrations without directly participating and found it was perfectly peaceful. He remembered the slogans when the demonstrations approached Christian neighborhoods. For convenience, the demonstrations started at the mosques on Fridays, which is why friends of the Christian faith went to the mosques. Whenever the demonstrations passed through [Christian] quarters, they would shout “Al sha’b Al sori wahid wahid wahid!” [The Syrian people is one, one, one!”].
• In July 2011, together with Alain Gresh, Burgat visited the city of Hama after a terrible massacre was committed by the security forces. The inhabitants showed him the contents of their cell phones: bloody bodies and every possible form of mutilation that had taken place three days before. “Wala une rose, c'est cher” [“Wala, a rose is expensive” – unclear to TM].
• Three months later, Burgat found himself face to face with Ahmad Tlass, a family member of the former Minister of Defense, who gave a full account of what had happened at the demonstration and what he had seen. Burgat mentioned the blog “Un oeil sur la Syrie” [One eye on Syria] that was maintained by Wladimir Glasman and Ignace Leverrier, a French diplomat relatively close to the security services, and former Arabic teacher with serious knowledge of the field. Ahmad Tlass said that the demonstration that marched in front of them, with several hundred thousand people, was perfectly peaceful. The governor had forbidden to open fire, and suddenly, shots rang out from the Clock Square [Place de l'horloge]. The perpetrators were identified, as an investigation was launched. Burgat learned that they were Alawite Kurds, and it turned out that they had no connection with [inaudible].

 Burgat quoted Wladimir Glasman: “Ahmad Tlass’s testimony shows that the members of a cell deliberately wanted violence to escalate, deliberately shooting to kill. They organized fake attacks. General Tlass was moved by the fact that no Christians were among the victims, because the attack was designed to frighten Christians.”

An IFPO student said to Burgat, screaming, “I'm a human being, not an animal.” This gentleman, who Burgat saw a few months later, was the emir of a Katiba [battalion of the Islamist opposition]. This illustrated that the authorities wanted this to become an armed struggle.

What happened in Tunisia and Egypt had a contagion effect, but it would be mistaken about the reality if one didn't remember what the regime's attitude was. The regime did the exact opposite of what it claimed to be and did exactly what it accused its opponents of doing.

The regime accused its opponents of having links with foreign commanders. In the present case, Burgat argued that Mazen was considered a fundamentalist Muslim [by the regime], but named his son Patrick. If he was really a fundamentalist, Burgat emphasized, he wouldn't have winked and called his son Patrick. The regime has always talked secular but acted doctrinally. It has often been said that the crisis is opaque. Burgat often spoke out on the Syrian crisis and invited the director of the film The Return to Homs [العودة إلى حمص] to talk. The film traced the career of a famous footballer who explains that the Syrian crisis isn't complex but simple, it is the revolt of a people against their dictator. The regime did everything in its power to prevent people from thinking of the crisis in these terms.

It divided the front of its opponents, which had to be reduced to one confession, the most dangerous, obviously, being the confession of the majority. The regime did everything in its power to make people think that the revolt is exclusively Sunni Muslim. The regime aimed to make Christians feel threatened by this revolt, and in reality, the regime did the opposite of its political discourse. In Syria, it was incongruous and forbidden to mention the existence of religious diversity. But in Damascus [2011], posters were already appearing in March. Even if the communities are indistinguishable, the diversity of society can be seen in the dress codes. The posters showed representatives of Syrian society all answering the same question: “When someone asks me what my religion is, I say I'm Syrian”. This was the regime's signal that its strategy was confessional division.

The regime was going to anchor this discourse in a more practical way too: repression targeted confessional affiliations differently. The Druze were subjected to tear gas, but the Sunnis in Homs and Damascus were being shot with live ammunition. It was a game of division, including by religious affiliation.

The regime, which rejected sectarianism, was, itself, mobilizing this fiber among its Shiites troops and among the Lebanese Hezbollah. People heard tales on the defense of the tomb of Saida Zeynab, a Shiite shrine. The regime would also flatten the potential sectarianism of Christians.

There was another way of summarizing the regime's strategy: the regime succeeded in turning the situation into an armed struggle after losing support in the political arena. The aim was to create a minimum of violence among its opponents, which would enable the regime to justify the use of weapons. The regime was always one violent step ahead of the protesters. Confronted with peaceful discourse, it responded with live ammunition. When the first live ammunition was fired by the opposition, the regime responded with RPGs. When the demonstrators use RPGs - and they didn’t go beyond that - they became targets of completely indiscriminate bombardment. Right from the start, the regime climbed the towers of violence. Right from the start, the sexual register was used, and it took a long time to realize that this was systematic from the start of the conflict.

The children of Dara’a were the first to have their fingernails pulled out, and when their fathers came to fetch them, they said, “Make some more [children], or else bring us your wives”.

Burgat mentioned another example that illustrates the antithesis between what the regime said about these opponents and what they really were and that can be correlated with Patrick Dabbagh. In Damascus, there was an embryonic psychoanalysis society, which was not the trend. The president of the society, who was in Paris at the time, had asked the French Near East Institute to hold a meeting on the institute's premises. This lady decided to devote herself to interfaith work as soon as the revolt began. Later when she returned to Syria, she was arrested and thrown into prison. It was the moderates the regime was afraid of, not the radicals. In fact, the regime wanted the radicals to be visible and would feed into their ideology. As everybody knows, the regime released people already labelled as jihadists because it knew they will join the ranks of the extremist fringe.

The regime committed horrors. The singer Qashoush was found with his vocal cords torn out. A man accused of trampling on a portrait of Bashar had both legs amputated. The Mukhabarat [intelligence services] made sure people knew what had happened. Burgat again quoted Wladimir Glasman: “from the very first months of the war, they committed particularly despicable crimes, torturing and emasculating a 13-year-old child, etc. [...] they leaked unbearable scenes of torture.”

To blacken the opposition, the regime spared the jihadists after having freed them. The air bombardment was used against the most legalistic and structured opposition. The repression against the military was specific and horrible. Burgat interviewed a soldier who had refused to shoot at demonstrators in Dara'a. Twenty of them were then arrested and suspended for ten days, they thought they would die but were finally released and sent back to their unit.

Burgat made a second point on the internationalization of this crisis. If people had come together today, if no Syrian judicial body is able to do the job the court was doing, it was because the regime has survived. It was because this crisis quickly passed into foreign hands.

Burgat suggested distinguishing between state and sub-state internationalization. State actors were those who supported the regime or the opposition. Those who have supported the regime have indisputable qualities of constancy, namely Russia and Iran. Syria can be described as a Russian-Iranian protectorate. They have been consistent. The Shiite Iranians liked to say that they controlled four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Sanaa, Beirut and Damascus. Burgat explained he had the privilege of debating with Iranian leaders in Iran and told them they were bragging, pretending their diplomacy was focusing on people, but they were supporting a dictator. They replied that it was a question of safety.

Burgat often found himself explaining the reasons for Russia’s entry into the war. Once, in the United Arab Emirates, he said that Putin wanted to upset the West because they had come into his zone of influence to remove his regional footholds. The opponents [of the regime] quickly told the Russians that they would leave the bases in Tartous. Putin's advisor [replied to Burgat] that Putin was taking revenge for the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. Putin said he was fighting in Syria, so he won't have to fight tomorrow, at the gates of Moscow. In 2014, Burgat had contact with someone who attended a meeting between Bashar and Putin and heard [Putin saying] “as long as I am president of Russia, you'll be president of Syria”.

Those who have helped the opposition are the Turks and the Westerners, including the French. To simplify things, Burgat said that the Syrian legalist and trans-confessional revolution gave rise to two adjoining revolutions that hid the first movement: first, the Kurdish revolution, which mobilized Turkish attention, and second, the extremist and jihadist fringe. In a paper Burgat published in le Monde [French main newspaper], he explained that France focused solely on the consequences of the regime's dispositions. That was much easier to defend in the eyes of the public. There was a secular regime and bearded villains. France wanted to create a Syrian opposition in the image it wanted, but it didn't accept that the population had a degree of religiosity.

Those who defended the regime did so very effectively, while those who defended the opposition soon had second thoughts. Burgat estimated there was a ratio from one to ten between damage caused by Daesh and victims of the regime. [The West] was going to concentrate on Mosul and forget about the legalist revolt. Burgat said there were three mechanisms that have produced this radical fringe and turned Western players away from the fight against the regime. These mechanisms produced sectarian extremes that have anesthetized national players and distracted them from what should have been their job.

Jihadists from 80 different nations came together. They gave Syria a different territoriality and temporality since they were fighting on the scale of the Muslim world. Their modes of action, suicide attacks, and sectarian discourse were essential markers.

The three mechanisms Burgat presented were:

• The mobilization of the “Angry Sunni”, the people left behind by the world's political systems who felt excluded from their respective political fora and wanted to live out their religious experiences.
• The huge methodological error done by the Americans in Iraq, who expelled hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers from the army and out into the street. The core of Daesh was made up of all these now unemployed soldiers who were without the slightest resources. It's very important to reiterate this. This is why, in Mosul, ISIS was not met with opposition from the population.
• The Syrian regime itself, in two ways: the first Burgat had already mentioned, and the second was the use of sectarian mobilization tricks. The regime mobilized Afghans to come and liberate Saida Zeynab's tomb. It used the same lexicon as Daesh, but in the name of Shiite membership. The regime is most certainly responsible for all the horrors Majed mentioned.

Civil Parties’ Counsels Bectarte and Baudouin questioning of Burgat

Counsel Bectarte mentioned Burgat’s words on the regime's rhetoric after the start of the Syrian revolt and asked him to explain the current discourse. She wondered if Burgat had any comments on the interviews with Bashar Al-Assad himself. Burgat did not consider himself to have sufficient knowledge to give information on the regime's daily life. In any case, people can see that the regime has practically sold the country to foreigners and is trying to change the demographic ratio to a primarily Shiite population. Burgat emphasized the counter-performance of communication on the Syrian crisis. Not only did the regime  follow its agenda, but other international governments also tried to impose their own interests.

Jean Luc Mélenchon [French far leftist politician] has always denied the autonomy of the Syrian political actors, and this, unfortunately, defined the discourse of a whole section of Arab leftists. So, all those who attacked Bashar were suspects. This discourse has sanctified opposition to Israel, of which Bashar is the hero. Burgat said he often quoted Yassin el Haj Saleh, who fraternally insulted Arab leftists by saying that [leftist] should stop thinking that [Syrians] are not actors.

The structure of the Syrian regime has not changed.

Counsel referred to Burgat’s analysis of the characteristics of repression and asked him what he could tell the court about the phenomenon of enforced disappearance. Burgat said, an hour ago, he was talking to a Syrian woman who mentioned her sister who disappeared, leaving her children alone for three days. Enforced disappearance is the ABC’s of the crisis.

Facebook was banned in 2011, three months later it was authorized again. In October through November, a wave of arrests took place. 1,500 people disappeared. In some cases, families managed to identify where their loved ones were taken. In the case of Mr. Dabbagh, there is a testimony from someone who saw him in a police station. [a sentence unclear].  Foreign prisoners received a special treatment and it was generally much harder for their families to confirm their condition and whereabouts

Counsel Baudouin recalled Burgat words on a state that presents itself as secular but plays on confessionalism. Since Burgat was present in 2011, Baudouin asked him to talk about his lived experiences and how he felt on the ground. Baudouin wondered if it was terror, like what is shown from the file. Considering the collective work on the book [Pas de printemps pour la Syrie], Baudouin wanted to know what Burgat recalled about the crimes related through these testimonies and to share his thoughts on the impression of being at the height of the use of torture.

Burgat commented on the professional atmosphere. The French Near East Institute was the traditional target of interrogations of diplomats. During the first weeks, the [French] Embassy's position was to give credibility to the regime's line. Mr. Chevalier was called to order by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but at the beginning, he somewhat supported the regime. The gentleman from the intelligence services recited the narrative swallowed up by his colleagues. This narrative lasted three weeks and then changed. From the beginning of July, Burgat was in Hama and saw the worst horrors with his own eyes. He and his colleague watched these videos with sound. A freelancer from Le Monde [French newspaper] was arrested very quickly, as well as the psychoanalyst [Burgat previously referred to]. Repression started early.

La Coquille [The Shell - book of Moustafa Khalife] is a detailed account of the Palmyra prison. Currently, Burgat is finishing editing a book about torture the of Libyan and Egyptian prisoners. The Egyptian prisoners told him there is a moment where they try to make them say something [under torture], but once it’s over, torture stops. Syria was very different. For ten years in Palmyra, people were in a cell where they could not all lie down at the same time. Every Friday, the cell would open, and three to four prisoners would come out to be hanged. When the prisoners came out on stretchers, they were beaten. Torture in Syria has reached a stage [inaudible to the trial monitor].

Burgat mentioned a friend of his from Hama, who told him a story that could give the court an idea. During the repression in Hama, before the heavy bombardments, they shot all the men in her building, ages eight to 85. All of them were murdered and placed in piles. His uncle escaped and died three weeks later; he had lost his mind.

The Tunisians didn't impose a tenth of the violence committed against Syrians. In Yemen, there would be a scandal if a woman was arrested while in Syria, they were simply arrested.

Counsel Bectarte referred to Burgat’s recount of the extent to which Hama has haunted Syria and the 15 to 45 thousand people dead. Bectarte asked why it was not possible to put an exact figure on the death toll. Burgat replied that there was not a single photo of Hama, there has been no documentation. What is happening in Gaza is not documented by the press, but there are videos. Burgat told Arabs that the first rebellion was in Hama. The shock was such that society knew what it risked.

Attorney General Viguier Questioning of Burgat

Attorney General Viguier thanked Burgat for his statement. She had her first question on the intelligence services and said that Burgat was heard in another trial where he explained that after Hama, the Baath party had not anticipated the revolt, and the regime therefore transferred powers to the intelligence services. She inquired if Burgat could talk about this shift.

Burgat said he is indebted to W. Glasman for this interpretation, who said that Hafez Al-Assad realized that the Baath and the Syrian army were useless. So, starting from the intelligence nuclei, he transferred power to autonomous and rival organizations. Burgat mentioned the story of a Syrian returning to Syria from France, who was arrested several times. He was arrested a first time by one service, and then by a second service, which asked him for what the first asked for. Burgat referred to the expression “Katib Taqrir” [Writer of reports], stressing that one of two Syrians became a “report writer” [a snitch  in this context].

Burgat mentioned another anecdote of a young girl who used to go horse-riding with Bassel [Al-Assad]. She returned to Aix-en-Provence [France], where many people from the services had property. They invited her and told her, “Your friend, this “Burgat”, is no longer in Damascus, but in Beirut, so it's harder to keep up with him. His cleaning lady was an idiot; every week she was summoned by the services”. One morning at 6 a.m., Burgat recalled he was strolling in front of the Air Force headquarters, taking photos of the huge frescoes. A motorcycle arrived, then two motorcycles arrived, even though they were forbidden in Damascus. They demanded the removal of the pictures Burgat had just taken. Burgat concluded that the omnipresence of the services was the regime's trademark.

Attorney General Viguier mentioned the competition between intelligence departments and their tendency to nominate leaders who hated each other. She wondered if there were attempts to coordinate between the departments, because what the procedure shows is that they communicated constantly, with notes addressed to various branches and departments. Viguier said one got the impression of transversality.

Burgat replied that Ali Mamlouk became the one who knew what was occurring, and he was even more informed when foreigners were involved. The regime has always been afraid of Westerners. There is every reason to believe that the secret service coordinator was perfectly aware of the detention of French citizens. Burgat doesn’t think anything happened that Ali Mamlouk was not informed of.

Attorney General Viguier referred to Burgat’s book which was added to the proceedings, and which mentioned the control of Syrian life at page 33. She quoted “the intelligence services have seen their activities expand [...] this situation has become a source of enrichment from the bottom to the top [...]”. She asked Burgat if he considered whether this description illustrated a dimension of widespread corruption. Burgat replied that members of the intelligence services paid themselves from the beast. All the bikers were Alawites. Cabdrivers were rather Sunni. The mechanism for appropriating the victim's villa was quite eloquent. The intelligence services were in every field. Money facilitated certain transactions.

Attorney General Viguier asked if Burgat had any information about attempts to extort prisoners by promising their families their release even though the prisoners were already dead. Burgat said he knew this from a secondary source. The particularity is that in the Dabbagh case, it did not work; whereas, usually, by paying, you could find out where the people were.

Attorney General Viguier came back to the particularity of Damascus. In his book, Burgat said that the security network was tighter. She wondered where these places were located geographically, and what was this particularly strong mesh Burgat referred to.

Burgat mentioned a Christian district in Al-Mazzeh where speculative development took place. On the security network, Burgat had another anecdote. The demonstrations took place on Fridays and as early as Thursday evening, one could observe extremely suspicious people. The regime had sent out road sweepers in greater numbers than necessary, and everybody knew that they were all Alawite. So, the regime went so far as to preposition sweepers in places where demonstrations were likely to take place. At the French center, the newspaper seller kept a complete list of all comers and goers.

Presiding judge Raviot displayed an aerial view of the city of Damascus with the airport on the western side of Damascus. Burgat explained that the presidential palace was located on the slope of Jebbel Qassyoun [Mount Qassyoun]. The President has also a more discreet villa. Judge Raviot said that the University of Damascus was also visible. Burgat said it was the district where a fire caused by the French killed 1,500 people in 1925.

Attorney General Viguier suggested presenting a clearer map available in the procedure, which Judge Raviot displayed saying that it was less graphic. Burgat commented saying that the high school was just a stone's throw away from the place where people died under torture. Viguier asked if he could locate the presidential palace and Burgat said it was on the left, in an inaccessible area in Jebbel Qassyoun. Counsel Bectarte added that it was visible how close the presidential palace was to the Al-Mazzeh Air Base. Burgat stressed that the presidential palace was at a higher altitude.

[Proceedings were suspended at 3:52 pm and resumed at 4:30 pm]

******

Expert Witness 3 Garance Le Caisne (Le Caisne) testimony

 Judge Raviot presented Dorothée Camille Garance Le Caisne, who lives in Rennes (France). He asked her if she had any links with the defendants, what Le Caisne denied. She was sworn in as a witness.

Le Caisne explained she had been working on issues related to Syria since 2011 and visited the country several times since the beginning of the revolution and the war that followed. After 2014, she had been focusing on the Syrian prison system. Under Hafez’s regime, an estimated 17 thousand people disappeared. At the time, it was more a way of scaring people, but it wasn't necessarily at the regime's core. But from 2011 onwards, the regime went into overdrive. Bashar Al-Assad and his regime believed they could lose power. They cracked down in an unprecedented way and started arresting more and more people. When you're arrested, it is usually without an arrest warrant. You disappear, that's something we find hard to understand here, Le Caisne said. You can go to a demonstration, or simply go to buy bread, and disappear. It is a way of controlling information. There are four Mukhabarat [Syrian intelligence services]: [1^st inaudible], the Military Intelligence Services, the Political Security and the Air Force Intelligence Services. They are divided into branches, which have many detention centers throughout the territory controlled by the regime. These centers can be in a police station, on the ground floor of a building, in an old gymnasium, anywhere. When you're arrested, it is usually by the Intelligence services.

Le Caisne continued saying that it is hard to explain, but it is as if you disappeared from the surface of the earth. Your family has no news of you. The only way to get information is to give Bakshish [bribes] to people of the regime. You may reappear at some point, and that's because you have been tried in a speedy trial. Then your name reappears, and you're sent to prison. So, there is a difference between detention centers and prisons, Le Caisne argued.

To explain how she came across all this, Le Caisne specified that it was thanks to [the information and evidence] Syrians collected. People have been raving about it in Ukraine, but the Syrians started collecting [information and evidence] long before the Ukrainians, in an incredible way, Le Caisne stressed. They even trained themselves to collect well. For example, if you are filming a destroyed building, you don't just film the destroyed building, but the surrounding area, so you can geolocate it properly. Westerners have asked for this.

They collected well because [the massacre of] Hama in 1982 has remained in Syrian’s memories. At first the Syrians did it for themselves and then for the journalists, like Le Caisne who couldn't get there, and to alert the world and various of organizations [unclear, including SCM].

Among this collection, there are photos called the “Caesar file” taken by a man who was a photographer within the regime's military police. The regime's Headquarter is in the Qaboun district of Damascus. Ceasar had been working for the military police for several years. He was in charge of photographing soldiers' bodies for military justice, but how they died could have been a fire, a murder, etc. He filled out forms for military justice. In March 2011, they were asked to go and photograph at Tishreen hospital in the north, in the district of Barzeh. At first there were names on the corpses, and gradually there were only numbers, three numbers.

The first was the number of the detainee and then the number of the branch of the detention center. Every morning, just before the photographer arrived, an army forensic pathologist affixed a third number to a white sheet of paper placed on the corpse. The latter corresponded to the numbering of corpses photographed by this team. These numbers start from five thousand to [unclear] with 1A, then 1B. So, there is a sequence of numbers. These corpses obviously did not die of natural causes. Most are naked or in their underwear. Many have suffered malnutrition and starvation. Since the number of the detention center appears [on the corpse], it is as if you had the signature of the office, because that is where the detainee came from.

In the Koblenz trial, there was an expert report by Dr. Markus Rothschild. What was interesting was that by analyzing all 27 thousand photos that represented 6,700 detainees, he showed the systematic nature of torture and the way these detainees were treated. The conclusion is that torture was systematic. Doctor Rothschild [himself] sometimes mixed-up certain photos and that was how he realized the systematic nature [of torture and ill-treatment].

 Le Caisne continued explaining that prisons are there to torture Syrians, not to get information. Torture isn't there to make people talk, it is there to silence them. Once someone lays a hand on you, it is as if your body was a kind of border. You undergo a kind of physical but also moral breaking point and are never the same again. Sometimes it is hard to imagine, but when you listen to survivors' accounts, you realize there's a before and an after.

In these centers, cells are overcrowded, and detainees are only allowed to go to the toilet once or twice a day if they are well treated. They lie down in turn. You lose your sense of time and space, you can't see the light of day, you're somewhere else between life and death, especially as a missing person. It takes Westerners a long time to grasp that. Many prisoners disconnect. For example, [name redacted], who spent seven months in the center, started hallucinating. He felt a hand on his head and asked someone to put a hand on his head again. Then he realized it was a hallucination. At another point, he described a scene in which he no longer recognized himself in front of a mirror.

The only way Le Caisne found a way to try and understand was to refer to authors who had been in detention centers. She felt a need for new words. Among the many writings of Charlotte Delbo [a French writer chiefly known for her memoirs of her time as a prisoner in Auschwitz], one of the phrases stayed in Le Caisne mind: “those who came back didn’t got out”. You can be freed, but you never get out. This tear means that you have several memories, the memory of the detention and the memory of the aftermath.

Le Caisne then related the story of [name redacted], who was detained two to three months by the Air Force Intelligence Services and spent his time saying he “couldn't connect”. The only time he found rest was when he wrapped a turban around his head. That's how he found rest after leaving the detention centers. Torture is something that stays inside you, Le Caisne stated.

In Le Caisne’s opinion, enforced disappearances were another kind of torture. Again, it is very difficult to find words to explain. The families of the missing persons who spoke mentioned dizziness, gaping holes, like a panic of the senses. You've got nothing left to hold on to, what you've got left are [your loved one’s] last words. You could almost say that enforced disappearance does not exist. The aim is really to tear individuals and families apart. It's a social death, a desire to kill politics and a way of maintaining power over one’s own population. It's a form of torture to refuse to give them information.

 Le Caisne mentioned [name redacted P1], who is married to [name redacted P2]. Her husband used to distribute milk in besieged neighborhoods, and it took her six months to find him. He was sent to a prison after his name had reappeared, and [name redacted P1] managed to get a visit. The first time, she didn't recognize him, she said “please [name redacted P2], tell me something that belongs only to us”. She realized that he wasn't walking normally and had gone blind. Le Caisne said that once you've been reunited with your loved one, your life is punctuated by visits, the meals you make for them, or the money so that they can have some attention from the guardians. That's why Le Caisne believed that enforced disappearance is a form of torture for families. Very often, you can't find your loved one because he or she doesn't turn up and isn't sent to prison. Many families have succeeded in finding their loved ones in the Caesar file.

Le Caisne referred to the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees based in Istanbul, Turkey, that has posted photos of the detainees' faces on their website. It might seem strange not to have an exact figure [of the number of people in the Ceasar file], but there were some bodies the experts didn’t know whom to attribute them to. 80% of these detainees were prisoners of Branch’s 215 and 227, five percent of detainees were from the Air Force Intelligence Services. The Ceasar photos stemmed from 24 centers in and around Damascus.

 Le Caisne further explained that the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees estimates that there are 1,500 families whose loved ones are part of the file. For many, it was a relief to find their loved ones among these photos, because that way they knew [their fate]. It's complicated to live with absence. Having news is a relief, also because you can recognize your loved one which means that he hasn't been too badly damaged by torture.

Maryam Al-Hallaq, co-founder of the Ceasar Families Association, spoke of her relief to have recognized her son, a 25-year-old dental student. Beaten up at his university, he was arrested and then he disappeared. Maryam was able to see his photo, two or two and a half years later, relieved to see that her son had not been treated too badly.

Even if they have recognized their loved one, some people still have doubts and tell themselves “What if it wasn't him?” And they don't have the body or the circumstances of death. These photos are archives of absence. They show erasure. This absence ultimately keeps on because their bodies were thrown into mass graves. All Maryam wants is a grave, so she can sit next to her son [emotion in Le Caisne’s voice].

Le Caisne found it amazing to see the fighting spirit of the Syrians who are fighting against this regime. She related the story of [name redacted], who was very close to his brother, and recognized him in Caesar's photos. He said he was someone who had many friends. He was happy that [his brother – name redacted] was buried with four thousand people and not alone. It's a kind of “screw you, Bashar Al-Assad, because even in mass graves, we are all together”. This message showed the regime how Syrians refused to be controlled by fear.

Le Caisne said she didn’t think people in the West would ever understand this fear. It is possible to get close to it, but Le Caisne doubted people here will ever be able to live it. That's why Hanane and Obeida's story is exemplary. Le Caisne said that [name redacted - trial monitor unsure about spelling of the last name] and herself followed them for several years, and they were overcome by fear, but they kept going. Le Caisne realized how strong they are, and it is true that their lawyer and the SCM [Syria Center for Media and Freedom of Expression] as well as Mazen Darwich have been extremely supportive.

Since the regime wants to force silence, it wants to kill memory and create voids and absences. They [the regime] threw away hundreds of Mazen's books and photo albums. This fight is also about memory, about telling the story.

When you know how much torture tries to force silence, Le Caisne continued [she paused and had emotion in her voice]. The day Hanane and Obeida organized a funeral for Mazen and Patrick at their home, at the end of 2018, before the friends came for the condolences, Hanane's father approached Obeida. He gave him his tie, and from the outside it seemed like he passed the suffering, even if Obeida was in that suffering. When you consider that Hanane's father was also tortured and told his family about it, the only time he spoke about it was in hospital. Le Caisne said she couldn't define it, but to receive the tie just before the condolences was an image.

Presiding Judge Raviot questioning of Le Caisne

Judge Raviot asked Le Caisne if she could give the court some figures on the information depicted by this military photographer since she has worked on these files and written a book. He precisely wanted to know how many photos there were and mentioned the amount of 45 thousand.

Le Caisne replied that there were between 53 and 54 thousand photos. There had been an issue with the exact figure at one point. The Ceasar file is composed of three sub-folders: files with detainees, files with soldiers, and then a small file with photos of civilians who were killed. The detainee file comes up to 27 thousand photos. The figure of 45 thousand was given because among the 27 thousand photos of detainees, the last figure given by the forensic doctor in the last photo equals 11 thousand. But in the Caesar file, there were 6,700 corpses.

Judge Raviot wanted to clarify if Le Caisne referred to the forensic doctor of the Syrian regime, which she confirmed. He inquired about the date when the photos were released, and until which date the photos were dated. Le Caisne said late Summer 2023, for security reasons.

Judge Raviot asked if, from the numbers photographed, centers could be identified. He reminded Le Caisne that she cited three centers and wanted her to clarify. Le Caisne said that Branch 215 from the Military intelligence Services represented 50 percent [of the corpses], Branch 227 from the Military intelligence Services represented approximately 30%, there are photos of the State Security, the Air Force Intelligence Service, a few from the Military Police, and photos of Branch 248. Judge Raviot understood that there are at least five different services, and Le Caisne replied that the photos come from 24 centers, but the majority are from Branches 215 and 227.

Judge Raviot referred to the detainees, military and civilians Le Caisne spoke about and wondered what difference she made between military and civilians and if the detainees were civilians. Le Caisne only confirmed detainees were civilians.

Judge Raviot asked Le Caisne to give the court an idea of the number of testimonies she had received from people who have been arbitrarily detained and who have given her information about their detention conditions. She said about twenty; they were long-term testimonies.

Judge Raviot said that in the proceedings, a certain number of testimonies concern people who were eventually released. Other testimonies were never released and had disappeared. From her work, he wondered if she had any criteria to explain why some were released and others not. For example [about cases like] the brother-in-law who was released and gave some indication that Patrick was tortured. Le Caisne said one shouldn't look for very established criteria in this regime. She added that you cannot be released without knowing anyone, and the more people you know, the easier it is to use your connections [to be released]. But that doesn't mean that if you know someone in a high position, you will be released.

Judge Raviot inquired about the arbitrary detention Le Caisne mentioned. He asked her to explain what criteria were used to detain people who were not opponents of the regime. Le Caisne replied that in the beginning, the regime targeted journalists, activists, and so on. But from the moment these people were arrested, they can give names of people under torture, who were not opponents. They can also be rounded up; the regime can go and arrest you. There's no logic to it. There was a real rush [to arrest and detain people] in 2011-2012 to such an extent that the cells were overcrowded. Witnesses from Branch 248 said that they didn't know what to do with the corpses anymore.

Judge Raviot referred to the existence of trials, or mock trials which Le Caisne had mentioned and he wanted to know who carried out these trials. Le Caisne said she had a lapse in memory. They created a special jurisdiction at the beginning of the revolution, and you could be tried in a classic military court. If someone knew the judge [end unclear]. Again, there's no logic.

Judge Raviot asked if the percentage of death sentences that were pronounced is known. Le Caisne confirmed it was unknown. Judge Raviot further asked if the percentage of men, women, and children in these photos is known. Le Caisne replied that most prisoners are between the ages of 18 and 40. Some are young people and children. There is only one woman, because men and women are not held in the same place. Sometimes they are in the same building, but on different floors, certainly not in the same cell. It would be very surprising if there were any photos of women, for decency reasons. This woman was photographed with her clothes on. Judge Raviot concluded that [women detention] was marginal. Le Caisne said she would not go that far saying it was marginal, because it was only the work of Caesar's team.

Judge Raviot referred to the three numbers she explained, the third number had been affixed by the forensic doctor. He wondered what [the corpses] became after that. Le Caisne explained they were brought in by refrigerated lorry, then the morgue became more and more full. In the north of Damascus, it was challenging to have so many corpses, so the corpses were sent to Al-Mazzeh, a military hospital. The corpses were deposited in the garages south of the military hospital, 100 meters from the Damascus French high school. Apparently, some of them stayed there for some time [inaudible].

Judge Raviot asked if these are the same corpses that were brought to the mass graves. Le Caisne confirmed, and said these locations are listed. There is talk about mass graves in [two locations unclear to the trial monitor, Le Caisne might have been referring to Qutayfa and Najha. Judge Raviot asked if Le Caisne knew how many mass graves there were, which Le Caisne denied.

Civil Parties’ Counsel Bectarte questioning of Le Caisne

Counsel Bectarte stated that everyone felt Le Caisne’s emotion and thanked her for sharing her testimony since she was the journalist who interviewed the most witnesses. Bectarte specified that Ceasar’s hearing, by the investigative judge was added to the instruction file. Bectarte focused on two answers Ceasar gave, when asked about the reason for such an accounting of the horror. Ceasar replied it was a routine and no one had the competence to put an end to it. She asked Le Caisne to comment on his answers.

Le Caisne said that routine is a word Ceasar uses all the time. For Le Caisne there is a difference between before March 2011 and after. Le Caisne thought that when Ceasar talked about routine, he was talking about procedure of going out there, photographing, and coming back to the office. He would print the photos on cards and after a while, when there were a lot of photos, he then put several corpses on the same card. Le Caisne thought that when he talked about routine, he was talking about that procedure.

Counsel Bectarte stated that in the same interview, Ceasar talked about the members of the opposition who supported him and said that if these files reached international criminal tribunals, Syria could get rid of all Ceasars [unclear]. The file showed the horror of this regime and the use of repression to the point of death, Bectarte said. She asked Le Caisne if there was a before and after Caesar.

 Le Caisne said she was not sure, maybe a very diplomatic before and after. The chancelleries have got hold of it, as France did. France asked the Security Council [of the UN] to refer the case to the International Criminal Court, but China and Russia have vetoed it. Le Caisne had the impression that this case had remained at a political level and had not been brought down to a human level, to the level of people, to do something about it. It's true that this issue is unbelievable, the photos have something unreal and invisible. Western leaders have used them in political terms. Le Caisne hoped that if there is a before and after, it will be played out in a court of law. She thought there had been a before and after in Koblenz thanks to Dr. Rothschild's expertise. There's a lot of criticism and attempts at revisionism about these photos, and if there is before and after, it is in the judicial framework. It did not change the Syrian regime, but its entry into the judicial sphere gives it importance, Le Caisne stated.

Counsel Bectarte said fear was mentioned a lot, and she understood why Le Caisne thought people couldn't possibly understand it. She asked Le Caisne to give more details about what exactly Syrians were afraid of. Le Caisne considered they were afraid of disappearing. This fear had passed down from generation to generation, the phrase that comes up all the time is “walls have ears”. The rate of Intelligence agents within the Syrian population is extremely high. She recalled [name redacted], who was detained for a year and a half, already damaged by torture, and then damaged much more by the silence of the international community. At one point, in February 2020, he returned to Syria. He had obviously been manipulated by members of the regime in Berlin, and upon arriving at the airport, he realized his mistake [of returning to Syria] and was immediately arrested. The news of his disappearance spread among the Syrian community. Once, Le Caisne was collecting the testimony of a detainee, and he immediately sent her a message asking if the regime was aware that they were working together. Le Caisne said she didn’t know and felt like a fool. Fear can tip over at any moment. It is as if everything suddenly collapses.

Le Caisne then recalled a young man she met when the book came out in 2015. He was born in France by Syrian parents, who said to Le Caisne, that even back home in France, they didn’t talk about Bashar Al-Assad. It is like living on unstable ground all your life. At any moment you can stumble. But it is just impossible to live your life on ground that isn't stable. In another trial, witnesses were threatened, said Le Caisne. It happens even if you've lived in Europe for many, many years, or if you are a refugee, and you still have family in Syria. That is what is so frightening. It doesn’t only concern the immediate family, but also one’s cousins, the grandparents. If you testify openly, there is this fear that the regime will attack your loved ones.

Bectarte came back to the Caesar file, stressing that Bashar Al-Assad had already been interviewed and confronted with this file. She asked Le Caisne to describe his response and the context in which he was asked that question. Le Caisne said he was confronted with it twice, in spring 2014 when the Ceasar file came out. He said that these were not even photos of Syrians. Then in 2016, Le Caisne recalled an investigation on the death of a Syrian that was launched in Spain. The sister decided to file a complaint, and after that, Michael Isikoff, an American journalist who works for Yahoo, met Bashar Al-Assad and told him this Syrian-Spanish individual recognized his brother in the Ceasar file. Bashar Al-Assad replied “But who reviewed these photos? Individual acts can happen, but there is no systematic policy”. But it is obvious that these are not isolated acts, Le Caisne concluded.

Civil Parties’ Counsel Baudouin questioning of Le Caisne

Counsel Baudouin thanked Le Caisne for her emotional testimony. He had two questions; first, on the criteria by which some people were released, rather than others who were tortured in prisons. Secondly, he wanted to have an idea, from the tens of thousands of people imprisoned, of the percentage who were eventually released. It was very complicated to answer, Le Caisne said. The figure available is of 95 thousand Syrians who disappeared in torture centers. But people think there are many more.

Counsel Baudouin addressed the omnipresence of the security services that Le Caisne mentioned several times. He asked if the control of portable means of communication and computers could explain these arrests. Le Caisne said that as far as she knew, it's a mix of all these things: during demonstrations arrests were visible and filmed, there are videos of civilians being taken away in vans. There was also research on Facebook accounts, which were closely controlled. When a neighborhood was surrounded, you could also arrest people at checkpoints. Arrests should really be understood as a way of spreading terror. Once people were arrested, they could give names, and it was a snowball effect. That is how the number of arrests went up.

Attorney General Viguier questioning of Le Caisne

Attorney General Viguier questioned Le Caisne about the number of missing persons, conscious that it is an impossible question to answer. Still, she referred to Le Caisne’s book that was added to the proceedings and where she mentioned the figure given by the Syrian Network for Human Rights of 215 thousand detainees, half of them been missing. Le Caisne mentioned the figure of 95 thousand detainees. Le Caisne said she based her testimony on the figures of these organizations. After the Attorney General asked for clarification, Le Caisne explained that 95 thousand was the number of missing persons given by the [Syrian Network for Human Rights] and whom the families have no news of.

Attorney General Viguier inquired about the testimony of a man called [name redacted] who was incarcerated by the Air Force Intelligence Service. She asked Le Caisne what she could tell the court about this service. Le Caisne said that when [name redacted] arrived in Al-Mazzeh, he was stripped of the money he had and sent to an extremely overcrowded cell. He was transferred to several cells for over a year, sometimes individual ones. In the summer of 2013, he was sent to a hangar. That was after the chemical attack in August 2013 and Obama's red line [inaudible]. The Syrian regime was expecting this strike so much that it put detainees in these hangars and was convinced that they were going to be targeted. [Name redacted] was placed in a different cell within the airport and became a Sukhra, a person in charge of managing food and toilet passages for the detainees, which enabled him to get out of the overcrowded cells. He was at the military hospital where many detainees died, lying on hospital beds. One man, whose nickname was Azrael, the angel of death, entered these rooms [rest inaudible to the trial monitor]. At one point, [name redacted] went to the toilets and managed to get back into the [unclear to the trial monitor] and explained to Le Caisne that the best place was near the door because some doors had ventilation or under the door you could get air that allowed you to breathe. As a Sukhra, he was sometimes in charge of removing bodies.

Le Caisne continued saying that the Rothschild report was very clear: in 95% of cases, Rothschild was unable to identify the causes of death. Apart from the blows, he couldn't see any injury that directly caused death, because death wasn’t necessarily caused by a blow, but by those wounds that were not treated, or by hunger, and by lack of light and air. When you were old, you couldn’t breathe. That is what drove [name redacted – same as previous paragraph] crazy sometimes. In these photos, you could not necessarily see the blow that caused his death, Le Caisne argued. Attorney General Viguier mentioned page 174 of Le Caisne’s book, where she said that he was transferred with many detainees to the hangars as a human shield, which Le Caisne confirmed.

Attorney General Viguier mentioned the repartition of the Caesar photos according to the different branches, which was detailed on page 176 of Le Caisne’s book [Attorney General read this passage]. She asked Le Caisne to confirm that the period was between 2011 and 2013, and that the entirety of the bodies photographed by Caesar were not there, since the Ceasar file is a sample of the corpses he photographed. Le Caisne confirmed, stressing that Ceasar did as he could. These figures were elaborated by Doctor Zacharia, a pediatrician from the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees. He's not an expert, but he and a young computer scientist, Imran, worked on these files. What Le Caisne referred to here was Zacharia's figures. The number evaluated by Rothschild is 6,783, as Le Caisne remembered. These concerned only the detention centers in Damascus and Dara’a, and not at all elsewhere in Syria.

Attorney General stressed that Caesar's work was completed by other photographers. Le Caisne replied that these are not Caesar's photos but those of his office. Attorney General clarified she was talking about the distinction between Damascus, Daraa’, and other regions [and that other people were doing the same job as Ceasar across Syria].

Counsel Bectarte added that considering the period of the Ceasar file of late July/early August in 2013, it was not possible to find photos of the Dabbaghs in the file. Le Caisne confirmed, saying that at that time, Ceasar was already in [name of place inaudible to trial monitor].

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