Syrian mass graves expose ‘machinery of death’ under Assad, top prosecutor says

An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run “machinery of death” under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013. Speaking after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former U.S. war crimes ambassador at large Stephen Rapp told Reuters: “We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine.