A trove of more than 70,000 newly obtained photos appears to document severe abuses and rights violations inside Syrian prisons under the Assad regime, German public broadcaster NDR reported.
The images, mostly taken between 2015 and 2024, reportedly show 10,212 dead bodies, predominantly men, but also women, minors, and at least one baby.
According to NDR, many of the bodies show clear signs of torture, malnutrition and mistreatment.
The photos were leaked by a former member of the military who was employed in the evidence preservation department of the military police in Damascus, the broadcaster said.
Many of the photographs were apparently taken in the morgue of the Harasta military hospital north-east of Damascus.
A distinctive staircase and striking tiles in some of the photos point to this location, according to NDR.
In an interview, the former officer stated that the hospital was "exclusively" responsible for photographing the bodies transferred by intelligence agencies.
NDR shared the material with German broadcaster WDR, Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Other international media outlets also participated in the project.
The material, which also includes thousands of pages of confidential documents from Syrian intelligence services, has also been submitted to Germany's public prosecutor general.
Investigations into potential perpetrators within the Assad regime could be conducted in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Human rights activists assume that tens of thousands of people were executed in Syrian prisons or died as a result of torture, denial of medical care, or starvation during the rule of long-term dictator Bashar Assad, who was ousted by an anti-regime offensive in December last year.
The new transitional government has vowed to hold accountable those responsible for the atrocities committed by the regime.
