“It is very important that the perpetrators of these high-profile crimes are brought to justice,” said Linnea Arvidsson, who coordinates the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria (COI).

“The focus should be on those who bear the main responsibility for the violations committed over so many years, rather than on lower-level perpetrators,” she told AFP in an interview.

Longtime President al-Assad fled Syria on Sunday as a lightning rebel offensive, led by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies, dramatically ended five decades of brutal rule of the Assad clan.

Syrians across the country and around the world celebrated the end of a crackdown in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and nearly 14 years of war that killed 500,000 people and displaced millions.

The new leaders pledged justice for victims, promising that those responsible for torturing detainees will not be pardoned and urging countries to “hand over any criminals who may have fled so that they can be brought to justice.” .

11,000 testimonials

The COI has been collecting evidence of crimes committed in Syria since the early days of the civil war in 2011 and has compiled lists of suspected perpetrators.

“So far we have around 4,000 names on these lists,” Arvidsson said.

The lists were never made public, but investigators shared details with prosecutors in jurisdictions that investigated and prosecuted suspected Syrian war criminals.

Arvidsson said the team had “cooperated in 170 such criminal investigations,” leading to 50 convictions so far for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria.

But so far, “they haven’t touched the perpetrators of higher-level crimes,” she said.

“Now there is an opportunity potentially opening up for them to be held accountable as well.”

The government in Damascus never granted the IOC permission to enter Syria, but with Assad gone, Arvidsson said the team hoped to gain access.

So far, she has conducted investigations remotely, through thousands of interviews and studying tons of documents and other evidence.

Arvidsson said the commission had more than 11,000 “testimonies” from victims of violations, survivors of detention and witnesses.

“Deep Darkness”

The opening of the Syrian prisons was “quite dramatic for our team who, for the first time, actually saw and confirmed (…) everything we heard,” said the UN investigator.

She recalled images from the notorious Saydnaya prison in Damascus which showed detainees being held in “basement rooms, without windows, without light”.

“This is exactly what we have been hearing for so many years from inmates,” Arvidsson said.

“Some of them haven’t seen sunlight for years and years… They all describe it as darkness, deep darkness.”

Investigators, she said, are now “very, very concerned” about the fate of files discovered in detention centers.

“It is extremely important now that these (files) are protected and preserved, ideally at the site where they were found, not moved, not tampered with, not lost, not touched,” she said.

Evidence was necessary to obtain justice. “Almost all listed war crimes and crimes against humanity … were committed by at least one party,” including “genocide,” Arvidsson said.

She highlighted the “deliberate” disappearance of tens of thousands of people into Syria’s feared detention network, creating “the national trauma that millions of Syrians have suffered.”

“It’s very important that people are brought to justice for this.”

The IOC hopes for a national accountability process in Syria and that steps will be taken to grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in the country.

“A combination of local and international efforts” could work, Arvidsson said. “We have a duty to spare no effort in this quest.”

© 2024 AFP