2014 Syrian detainee report
The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded after a six month investigation that the photographic evidence in the report was genuine. The ensuing HRW report based on the Caesar Report was titled, If the Dead Could Speak. This report published on 16 December 2015 said that Syrian officials should be tried for crimes against humanity.
The Caesar Report led to U.S. sanctions on Syria under the Global Magnitsky Act in 2012, and under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act in 2020. The Caesar Act was passed under the U.S. Senate National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (S. 1709) through a committee report by the U.S. House of Representatives