The director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Fadel Abdulghany told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “The Suweida hospital is now a crime scene, and yes, the bodies there must be buried, but they must also be documented in a professional and detailed manner”.
He adds that photographs and documentation must be produced for each body, including the burial site and all other relevant details, like photographs that clearly show their faces from multiple angles, as well as their clothing.
He said human rights organisations “whether local or international” should have been enlisted to perform this task, because “there are standards, because these were not natural deaths – they were murders”.
He warned that if these sites “aren’t handled in a careful and sensitive manner, this risks the destruction of the crime scenes, and the erasure of the identities of the bodies, [and the obscuring of] who committed the crime, and other details”.
“This situation should have been taken into consideration by the Suweida Military Council, as the entity in control of the hospital,” he added, referring to the militia loyal to al-Hijri.
He says the failure to have conducted such documentation and preserve the site of the killings constitutes a violation of the crime scene.
