For years, UN human rights our bodies have been documenting, monitoring and publishing stories on abuses, and bringing Syria’s dire human rights report to the world’s consideration.
The autumn of Bashar al Assad in December 2024 was largely greeted with euphoria by the Syrian folks, however pictures of a whole bunch of individuals pouring into the infamous Sednaya Jail, desperately looking for mates or family members, and testimony from former prisoners, recounting the sadism and torture they endured, was a vivid reminder of the atrocities dedicated beneath the previous regime.
Since 2016, the Worldwide Neutral and Unbiased Mechanism (IIIM), has been amassing an enormous assortment of proof, aiming to make sure that these accountable are finally held accountable.
Within the eight years since, persistently denied entry to Syria, they’ve needed to work from exterior the nation.
Nonetheless, every thing modified after the fast collapse of the regime. Simply days later the top of the IIIM, Robert Petit, was in a position to journey to Syria the place he met members of the de facto authorities. Throughout this historic go to, he made some extent of emphasizing the significance of preserving proof earlier than it is misplaced without end.
UN Information interviewed Mr. Petit from his workplaces in Geneva and started by asking him to explain the reactions of the Syrians he met throughout his go to.
This interview has been edited for readability and size.
Robert Petit: It was a sobering and emotional time. I skilled a mixture of hope and pleasure, in addition to concern and nervousness, and a number of unhappiness from the households of prisoners who had been killed.
However there was positively a way of change throughout the board. It is my private hope that the aspirations of Syrians might be totally realized with the assistance of the worldwide neighborhood.
UN Information: What was the aim of your go to, and was it profitable?
Robert Petit: As with a lot of the world, we have been shocked on the pace with which the regime crumbled, though in hindsight we must always have realized that the foundations have been utterly eroding for years.
We needed to rapidly begin serious about methods to handle this new scenario: for the primary time in eight years, we’ve got the prospect to actually fulfill our mandate.
The principle goal of the go to was to begin participating diplomatically and clarify to the brand new authorities what our function is and what we wish to do and get permission to take action. We discovered them to be receptive.
We formally requested permission to ship groups to work and discharge our mandate in Syria. That was again on December 21. We’re nonetheless ready for the reply. I’ve no motive to consider that we are going to not be granted permission. I believe it is a matter of processes fairly than willingness, and we’re hoping that inside days we are going to get that permission after which we are going to deploy as quickly as we will.
© IIIM Syria
Paperwork are piled up at a court docket home in Damascus, Syria, which was visited by the top of the IIIM, Robert Petit.
UN Information: How exhausting was it to gather proof through the years that you simply have been denied entry to the nation?
Robert Petit: Syrian civil society and Syrians normally have, since March 2011, been the perfect documenters of their very own victimization. They gathered an infinite amount of proof of crimes, usually at nice danger the price of their very own lives.
Yearly since we have been created, we tried to entry Syria. We couldn’t get permission, however we developed shut relationships with a few of these civil society actors, media stakeholders and people who collected credible proof, as did different establishments.
We gathered over 284 terabytes of information over time to construct circumstances and assist 16 totally different jurisdictions in prosecuting, investigating and prosecuting their very own circumstances.
Now we probably have entry to a wealth of recent proof of crimes, and we’re hoping to have the ability to exploit that chance very quickly.
UN Information: Throughout the Assad years, although, you had no assure that anybody could be delivered to justice.
Robert Petit: Our mandate has been very clear from the start: put together circumstances to assist present and future jurisdiction. And that is what we have been doing. There was all the time a hope that there was going to be some type of tribunal, or complete justice for the crimes in Syria. In anticipation of that, we’ve got been constructing circumstances and we hope to construct a wealth of understanding of the scenario and the proof that would assist these circumstances.
On the identical time, we have been supporting 16 jurisdictions all around the world prosecuting these circumstances, and I am very completely satisfied to say that we’ve got been in a position to assist over nearly 250 of these investigations and prosecutions and can proceed to take action.
UN Information: Throughout your journey you mentioned there is a small window of alternative to safe websites and the fabric they maintain. Why?
Robert Petit: Syria’s state equipment functioned for years, so there might be a number of proof, however issues go lacking, they get destroyed and disappear. So, there’s a time concern.
UN Information: Are the de facto authorities in Syria serving to you to safe proof?
Robert Petit: We had messaging from the caretaker authorities that they have been acutely aware of the significance of preserving all this proof. The very fact is that they’ve been in management for barely six weeks, so there are clearly a number of competing priorities.
I believe the scenario in Damascus is comparatively good in that a number of the websites, the principle ones at the very least, are secured. Exterior of Damascus, I believe the scenario is much more fluid and doubtless worse.
UN Information: When Volker Türk, the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Syria in January he known as for truthful, neutral justice within the wake of the tip of the Assad regime. However he additionally mentioned that the extent of atrocity crimes “beggars perception”. Do you personally assume that justice fairly than revenge, in a spot the place folks have been so badly brutalized, is feasible or possible?
Robert Petit: That is for the Syrians to reply themselves and hopefully be heard and supported in what they’ll outline as justice for them and for what they’ve suffered.
If persons are given the hope that there might be in place a system that can deal pretty and transparently with at the very least these most chargeable for the atrocities, it should give them hope and endurance.
I believe it’s attainable. I’ve labored in sufficient of those conditions to know that a wide range of issues could be finished to deal with these very complicated conditions, but it surely have to be Syria-led, they usually should have the assist of the worldwide neighborhood.
UN Information: Do you envisage that felony trials would happen in Syria at a nationwide stage or at a world stage, for instance on the Worldwide Prison Court docket?
Robert Petit: Once more, it should rely upon what Syrians need. You are speaking about actually hundreds of perpetrators, and a complete state equipment devoted to the fee of mass atrocities. It’s an unbelievable problem to outline what accountability means.
In my view, these most accountable, the architects of the system, have to be held criminally accountability. For everybody else, the methods a post-conflict society tackles the difficulty varies.
Rwanda, for instance, tried to make use of conventional types of dispute decision to attempt 1.2 million perpetrators over a decade. Others, like Cambodia, merely attempt to bury the previous, and fake it by no means occurred.
The perfect answer is the one which Syrians will resolve for themselves.
