Excerpt:
The team’s interrogation lasted more than two hours, during which all our phones and laptops were examined, and many photos - including personal ones - were deleted. The officer threatened us with worse consequences if we approached the frontier from the Syrian side again, and said that they know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published.
You can interpret personal photos that way, certainly. That is not necessarily what it means though. A selfie is a personal photo after all.
I’m not justifying military force against a nation anywhere. Nor am I really justifying anything, just because something is common does not make it just. I’m saying that the “they’re covering up a warcrime by deleting photos” line of thought is unlikely, based on what we’ve seen.
Seems to me that everyone else is bending over backwards a lot, lot more than I am. Thinking the personal photos cannot have been from this trip is an unusual requirement.