The U.N. Security Council held a session Tuesday to view photographs documenting alleged war crimes by the Assad regime in Syria. A team of three international prosecutors has obtained images from a Syrian defector showing emaciated and mutilated bodies likely resulting from torture. The defector is said to be a military investigator who handed over thousands of photographs he had taken of the regime’s victims. David Crane, chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, said the images provide direct proof of “industrialized” killings by Assad.

David Crane: “Our conclusion in the report was that the photographs and the witness himself are credible and sustainable in a court of law at the international or domestic level and that what he brought out over a period of two years is direct, specific, provable evidence of widespread and industrialized killing not seen recently. And the reason I underscore this is, and I’ll highlight it again, it’s a rare thing in our business that we get this type of direct evidence. But it’s direct, provable, sustainable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity being conducted by the Assad regime.”