US prepares biting Syria sanctions as Assad pummels Idlib
The United States is preparing to slap stringent sanctions on the Bashar al-Assad government as it pummels Idlib, raising questions about Syria’s long-term reconstruction.
A frustrated American photographer verbally sparred with Senate staffers Wednesday over restrictions at a hearing that prevented him from getting too close to the Syrian witness — who also happened to be a photographer himself.
“He’s a photographer, why’s he afraid of a camera?” complained the American photojournalist.
The witness, who sat with his back to the crowd in a blue rain jacket to obscure his profile, is a Syrian military defector who goes by the pseudonym Caesar. During his testimony, Caesar noted that he had asked for the photography restrictions out of fear that Damascus or its Iranian and Russian backers would assassinate him as a reprisal for smuggling some 53,000 photographs out of Syria documenting the systematic torture and murder in President Bashar al-Assad’s prisons.
Caesar is urging the United States to immediately implement the Syria sanctions law that bears his namesake as Syrian and Russian warplanes continue to bombard Idlib province, killing thousands of civilians and intentionally targeting medical facilities.
