A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, July 15, 2017
The Syrian war crime suspects who could be brought to justice
UN tasks Catherine Marchi-Uhel with securing justice for Syrian war crimes victims amid mounting evidence of abuse
A Syrian man shows marks of torture on his back, after he was released from government forces, in Aleppo, 23 August 2012 (AFP)
James Reinl-Friday 14 July 2017
NEW YORK, United States – From
a government torture and execution programme to poison gas attacks and
the Islamic State (IS) group’s inter-ethnic killing spree, there are
widespread allegations of crimes committed during Syria’s civil war and
the conflict in neighbouring Iraq.
But
thanks to a lack of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court
(ICC) and Russian efforts to stymie probes of its ally, the government
of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the chances of seeing
mass-murderers in the dock any time soon is remote.
Advocates
of justice, however, are not giving up. Moscow could not stop 105
United Nations members from voting in the UN General Assembly in
December to create an office to gather evidence and lay the groundwork
for future prosecutions.
This month, the UN appointed Catherine
Marchi-Uhel, a French jurist, to run the so-called International,
Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM), which is currently building
up to a 50-strong staff in Geneva, Switzerland.
Balkees
Jarrah, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch (HRW), lauded Marchi-Uhel’s
posting as “part of a push” to ensure the “horrendous atrocities
committed in Syria these past six years cannot be swept away with a
veto”.
Down
the road, Jarrah said the IIIM would “catalyse and coordinate global
efforts” to try Syrians at the ICC, a permanent war crimes tribunal in
The Hague, or form a bespoke court akin to those used against atrocities
in Rwanda or Cambodia.
We have never seen a situation as well documented as the conflict in Syria-Balkees Jarrah, HRW
The obstacles are political, not the lack of evidence, she emphasised.
The
Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), an
independent group of lawyers based at a secret European office, has
collected some 700,000 pages of intelligence and security archives from
war-ravaged Syria.
They have access to 55,000 photos of
detainees’ bodies – some with gouged-out eyes – smuggled out by a
former forensic photographer code-named Caesar who worked at Tishreen
military hospital, between 2011 and mid-2013.
In February, Amnesty International, a rights group, reported that
some 13,000 people were hanged over five years at the state-run
Saydnaya prison near Damascus. In May, the United States said the
government had built a crematorium there.
Investigators from the UN Human Rights Council's commission of inquiry on Syria saidgovernment
forces dropped chlorine bombs and hit an aid convoy in the battle for
Aleppo in 2016, while rebels fired on civilian areas and used human
shields.
A probe by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN blamed Syrian
government forces for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and
IS for using mustard gas. Use of the banned nerve agent sarin has also
been documented.
“We have never seen a situation as well documented as the conflict in Syria,” Jarrah told Middle East Eye.
Meanwhile, the US-based Syria Justice and Accountability Center has
built a database that facilitates the cross-referencing of evidence
found in some 500,000 pages of official documents and thousands of
online videos.
The
centre’s director, Mohammad Al Abdallah said the ubiquity of cellphone
cameras and the ease of file-sharing gave rise to an abundance of
evidence against everyone from the president all the way down to foot
soldiers.
“There’s
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who engaged in
committing violations from the government and the rebel sides – and you
can’t put everybody on trial,” Abdallah told MEE.
Read more ►
According
to Stephen Rapp, a war crimes prosecutor, the regime’s detention scheme
is especially interesting to lawyers because of its “paper trail” from
Caesar’s photos of tortured inmates’ corpses to documented orders
leading all the way to Damascus.
Evidence
is already proving its worth. Prosecutors in France, Germany, Spain and
other European countries are processing investigations on alleged war
crimes in Syria using so-called “universal jurisdiction” laws.
Damascus denies the allegations, Russia says international prosecutions can be politicised.
Against
this backdrop, MEE talked through the evidence with Rapp, Abdallah,
Jarrah and others and drew up a list of some likely indictees should
Marchi-Uhel’s IIIM ever get a Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal off
the ground.
President Bashar al-Assad
With
his slight lisp and meek demeanour, Assad makes for an unlikely war
criminal. He trained as a doctor and eye specialist, only succeeding his
father as president in July 2000 after his brother, Bassel, the heir
apparent, died in a car crash.
In
January, the 51-year-old dad-of-three was named on an ICC list of 15
people “to be scrutinized in relation to use of” chemical weapons by
government forces in the 2014 and 2015 attacks identified in the joint
UN-OPCW probe.
According
to Rapp, “there’s no problem with the paper trail to Assad”. Documents
that link him to the arrest, detention, torture and execution of
dissidents are filed away in cabinets in Europe, just waiting for a
green light to prosecute.
A file picture dated 13 June 2000 shows President Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother Maher (AFP)
Maher al-Assad, military commander
Bashar’s younger brother Maher had a reputation as
a brute that grew at the start of anti-government rallies, when he was
rumoured to be the unidentified gunman taking pot-shots at protestors in
a viral video from 2011.
He
was also named on the ICC chemical weapons list. As commander of the
elite 4th Armoured Division, he has been linked to the 2013 chemical
attack on Ghouta as well as sarin-filled rocket attacks.
Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau
In March, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Mamlouk and five other top military intelligence chiefs.
Lawyers
said he ran all four Syrian intelligence services that were behind the
“systematic and widespread torture” of regime opponents and activists.
His deputy, Abdelfattah Qudsiyeh, is also named.
HRW linked Mamlouk directly to atrocities in Daraa governorate.
Other 'Crisis Cell' officials
As
anti-government protests spiralled into violence, Assad reportedly
created a “Crisis Cell” to suppress the uprising. He leads the group,
through which he delegates day-to-day decisions to such officials as Maj
Gen Muhammad Mahmud Mahalla, military intelligence chief; and Maj Gen
Jamil Hassan, head of Air Force Intelligence, and others.
US and European Union officials link these men to ordering chemical weapons attacks and have slapped sanctions on them.
Islamic State ringleaders
The
militants do little to hide their atrocities. They have even advertised
roundups and executions of gays, Shia and other groups via gory videos.
The UN blames IS for a “staggering” array of crimes, including the
murder of Yezidis in Iraq and enslaving women.
Putting
IS leaders in the dock will be tough, however. Multiple reports suggest
the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is already dead. As Iraqi
forces liberated the IS stronghold of Mosul this week, videos emerged
of militiaman being tossed off a cliff and shot. Efforts are underway
to prosecute captured IS fighters, but many will not live to see their
day in court.
Rebel leaders
UN reports indicate that all sides – rebel and regime – have committed crimes during Syria’s brutal conflict.
In one well-publicised incident, Jaish al-Islam rebels drove caged prisoners from Assad’s Alawite sect on pick-up trucks through Douma and Eastern Ghouta to deter government air strikes.
According
to Rapp, it was a clear-cut war crime. But judges look for something
else, he added. “A variety of rebel groups have abused people on an
occasional basis. A court doesn’t prosecute occasional acts of abuse, it
needs to deal with organized abuse as a matter of policy,” Rapp told
MEE.