[Vause:] Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause with the headlines this hour. The U.S. president, Donald Trump, has wrapped up a four-day state visit to Japan by addressing American sailors and Marines on board the USS Wasp, docked near Tokyo. He thanked them for their service and marked the U.S. holiday, Memorial Day, which honors fallen troops. Two more climbers have died on Mt. Everest. One, a 62-year-old American on his way down. The other, a 64-year-old Austrian man. In all, at least 11 people have died this year trying to summit the world's tallest mountain, the most in four years. Many say overcrowding is making the climb even more dangerous. The Israeli military says it struck a Syrian anti-aircraft system just hours after the IDF says that system fired at an Israeli jet. Syrian state-run news says one soldier was killed, another was injured in the strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country will respond with strength and firmness against any aggression. A recent escalation in violence in Syria's last rebel-held province has killed hundreds of people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. The airstrikes have destroyed schools, hospitals, and most recently, an open-air market, which left dozens wounded. International organizations believe some of these airstrikes may have been aimed intentionally at civilians, which could amount to war crimes. Just some of the many committed by all sides in the Syrian conflict over the past eight years. CNN's Jomana Karadsheh and her team were granted rare access to a clandestine operation by a group of investigators risking their lives to collect evidence of alleged war crimes committed by the Assad government. And a warning here that some of the images in her report are disturbing.
[Jomana Karadsheh, Cnn International Correspondent:] In a nondescript building in Europe is a room called the Vault. Nearly 800,000 documents smuggled out of Syria are here, logged and translated, stored and preserved. Chris Engels heads the regime crimes unit at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, known as CIJA, a nonprofit organization funded by western governments. In these boxes is potential evidence of alleged war crimes that could one day be used against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
[Chris Engels, Director Of Investigations And Operations, Cija:] The documents cover a wide range of information and levels of command. They start from the highest levels of command, that include information on the president and the policymakers at the national level. We're able to get quite a lot of clarity on how orders went up and down the chain of command, how the responsibility at the highest level for policy is implemented in a way that we can see criminality actually take place on the ground.
[Karadsheh:] There is no one document here that's a smoking gun. But in international criminal justice, it's about linking the crimes to those responsible. Documents like this 2011 order, authorizing pay raises for military personnel, signed by President Assad, the commander in chief of the armed forces, may seem innocuous. But Engels says even this is crucial evidence.
[Engels:] We have several documents that are similar to this, naming Assad and others, that demonstrate that they are in control, and they have the power to direct the army and security services. And it is a fact that the army and the security services are continued to commit crimes, and these individuals aren't doing anything to stop it.
[Karadsheh:] CIJA has built dozens of cases against the regime, most relating to the early days of the revolution; the violent repression of protests; and the alleged torture and killing of thousands of demonstrators detained across the country. Since 2012, in the shadows of a war that's unleashed some of the worst atrocities of our time, a network of more than 100 Syrians were recruited, vetted, and trained by CIJA. We get a rare opportunity to meet one of those document hunters. Hadal, as he wants to be called, was a lawyer. Now he heads this team that has risked everything to save the evidence. HADAL,
[Document Hunter For Cija:] All members of our team, men and women, have been subjected to arrests, or beatings, or humiliation, or danger. We are operating in a war zone. In most cases, we would enter areas as airstrikes would be ongoing. But we have to go in to collect the evidence before it's damaged.
[Karadsheh:] For Hadal and his fellow evidence hunters, a treasure trove of documents has been left behind by the regime's infamous bureaucracy. HADAL [through translator]: After the free Syrian army captured locations from the government, LIKE military or intelligence sites, OUR teams would be ready, and they would enter these sites. Their primary task: to preserve these documents, or what is left of them. Because in many cases, these documents would be destroyed. CIJA has not only relied on evidence collected by its own network of investigators. In a number of cases, they've combined that with some of the most damning visual evidence of this conflict. Twenty-eight thousand horrific photographs of dead detainees smuggled out in 2013 by a military defector, code named Caesar. CIJA has been able to cross reference the identifying numbers seen in these pictures with ones in the smuggled documents, allowing them to identify some of the prisoners, and link them to specific facilities and the security apparatus who were holding them. One of those photos of those numbers was 30-year-old Hamad Kholani, a newlywed law student detained in April of 2012. His sister, Amana, a survivor of government jails, now a refugee in the U.K., is a living testimony to the Syrian regime's brutality.
[Amina Al-kholani, Syrian Activist:] When the Caesar files came out, Mohammad's photo was the first one. We went to issue a paper from the civil registry to confirm his status. They told us he died as a result of a heart attack. Our 34-year-old boy died of a heart attack.
[Karadsheh:] Documents issued by the regime claimed thousands held in its facilities all died of natural causes. Three other brothers from the al-Kholani family were also detained. Only one of them, Ilal, emerged alive, his gaunt face testament to the horrors inside government jails. According to CIJA's investigations, it's a story replicated thousands of times over in Syria, where torture is rampant and systematic and forced confessions are the norm. Syrian government officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But the regime has repeatedly dismissed evidence as fake and insisted it he was fighting terrorists, not peaceful protestors. Amina Kholani still desperately calls for justice for her brothers, but like so many other Syrians, she fears she may never live to see the regime held accountable for its crimes, as Bashar al-Assad seems to have defied the odds for now, surviving a revolution, and is on the verge of winning the war.
[Engels:] The tide's changed. And what we're making sure, is that when the shift does come, when the discussion about justice does appear, in five, or ten, or 20 years, that there will be evidence there.
[Karadsheh:] Evidence collected by CIJA has already been used in individual trials in the United States and Europe. It has also led to the arrest in Germany of at least one mid-level regime member accused of torture. For Hadal, this is just the start. HADAL [through translator]: I said good-bye to my wife and children and told them, "I am no longer yours. I am now owned by Syria and justice." Justice, he says, is a duty from which there is no turning back. Jomana Karadsheh, CNN.
[Vause:] The U.S. heartland continues to be battered by severe weather. Take a look at this video. It's a tornado about eight kilometers from Charles City, Iowa. An emergency official says 11 buildings were damaged, three of them homes. But no reports of injuries or any deaths. But in Oklahoma, which has been inundated by severe storms since last month, the governor is warning flood waters will continue to rise, and every single county, all 77, remain under a state of emergency. Six people have reportedly died in the flooding. More than 100 hundred inured. We'll take a break. When we come back, cameras in China capturing a rare sight. An endangered animal, never recorded in the wild before now. So what is it? And what makes it so unique? We'll tell you. But maybe you can guess.