Access to Syria 'crime scene' a 'game-changer': UN investigator

By AFP/Nina Larson

UN investigators who for years have been gathering evidence of horrific crimes committed in Syria hope Bashar al-Assad's downfall will finally mean they can access "the crime scene" and "massive evidence".

"There is a sea change," said Robert Petit, a Canadian prosecutor and legal scholar who heads the United Nations investigative body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) on Syria.

"The evidence in Syria is finally becoming available," he told AFP in an interview, a day after Assad fled Syria as Islamist-led rebels swept into the capital, bringing to a spectacular end five decades of brutal rule by his clan over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century.

"It's already quite clear that there's massive evidence," he said, pointing to the videos emerging from Syria's emptying prisons showing "rooms full of reams and reams of paper".

"There will be massive amount of information available."

Assad oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes.

The war drew in multiple international actors, with Russia and Iran backing Assad against anti-government rebels backed by a range of allies including the United States, which also headed an international coalition to combat Islamic State jihadists.

'Every atrocity imaginable'

The IIIM was set up by the UN in late 2016 and was tasked with preparing prosecutions for major international crimes committed by all sides in Syria.

But the group has to date been unable to access Syria itself, despite repeated requests to the Assad government.

The dramatic power shift now opens the possibility that the group can go to Syria and speak to victims and see the evidence first hand.

"It's the crime scene, so if we can have access to the crime scene, it's a game-changer for us," said Petit, who took over the helm of the group earlier this year.

Even without setting foot in Syria, his 82-member team has gathered huge amounts of evidence of the worst international crimes committed during the war, accumulating a whopping 283 terabytes of data.

"It's a huge repository," Petit said.

When asked if evidence against Assad himself figured in the files, he said he could not reveal such details.

But he said IIIM's "structural investigations" sought among other things to "map out the command responsibility of individuals,... (looking) at the highest level and all the way down to the actual physical perpetrator".

The investigators stressed in a statement that it was time "to start addressing the widespread impunity for nearly every atrocity imaginable".

"It does run the gambit from mass killings to the use of chemical weapons... to enslavement, to genocide," Petit said.

"It's only limited by the imaginations of the perpetrators, and unfortunately, that imagination seems to grow with the means at their disposal."

'Preserve the evidence'

The evidence gathered by the group has already been used to support more than 200 investigations into crimes committed in Syria, conducted across 16 jurisdictions, including in Belgium, France, Sweden and Slovakia, Petit said.

"These new circumstances are going to bring a lot more," he said, stressing that his team would need "additional resources".

The most important thing now. he said, was to "preserve the evidence".

Syrian civil society already had good experience and knowledge of how best to handle evidence and ensure it can be used for criminal proceedings, he said.

For those who might have less experience, he said the IIIM had set up a "basic how-to" on its website, including the importance of securing evidence and ensuring there is a clear chain of custody for every interaction with it.

The hope is there could now be a national accountability process in Syria, and that steps could be taken to finally grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in the country.

In both cases, the IIIM stands ready to help, Petit said, insisting that striving for justice needed to be a central part of Syria's way forward.

"If accountability is not part of it," he warned, "you're not building anything solid".