WAR CRIMES

10,000 Anti-Assad Activists Killed

Their bodies catalogued at one hospital between 2011 and 2013

Photographs of corpses at a Syrian hospital offer evidence of an industrial-scale campaign against President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents, U.S. investigators say. A hospital in Damascus, called Hospital 601, has processed more than 10,000 emaciated and disfigured bodies between 2011 and mid-2013, mostly of anti-Assad activists. A Syrian military forensic photographer, who defected to the West, turned over photos of the bodies to U.S. law enforcement agencies. American and European investigators concluded that the images were genuine and offered the best evidence to date of an industrial-scale campaign against Assad’s opponents. Though some U.S. officials want to use the photographs to build a war-crimes case against Assad, it is unclear if such a case will ever be brought.