The dark revelations revealed by the fall of Syria's Assad regime after 54 years seem to have no limits.
Prisons were emptied, exposing torture devices used against peaceful protesters and those considered to be opponents of the government. Thousands of detainees are recorded in archives. Morgues and mass graves hold emaciated and disfigured victims, or at least some of them.
Many others have yet to be discovered.
For these and many other atrocities, Syrians want justice. The rebel alliance that toppled President Bashar al-Assad last month has vowed to hunt down and prosecute regime leaders for crimes including the murder, false imprisonment, torture and gassing of their own citizens.
“Most Syrians would say that only by bringing them to justice can this dark 54-year era come to an end,” said Madaniyah, chairman of the Syrian Network of Human Rights Organizations and other civil society groups. Ayman Asfari said.
But even assuming the new authorities are able to track down the suspects, fulfilling their responsibilities will be difficult in a country as fragile, divided and battered as Syria. The experience of other Arab countries where autocratic regimes have collapsed proves the challenge. Neither Egypt nor Iraq nor Tunisia succeeded in securing comprehensive and lasting justice for the crimes of earlier eras.
Syria faces some unique hurdles. While the country's new de facto leader was a majority Sunni Muslim, the ousted government's upper echelons were dominated by the Alawite religious minority. This means that prosecutions for human rights abuses during the Assad regime risk increasing sectarian tensions in Syria.
For years, the judicial system has been nothing more than a tool for al-Assad, unequipped to deal with widespread and complex human rights abuses. Thousands of Syrians are likely involved, more than likely to be prosecuted, raising questions about the treatment of lower-level officials.
And after years of war, sanctions, corruption and misgovernment, just cleaning up the damage during the transition to a new government is a daunting task.
Nine out of ten Syrians live in poverty. The city is in ruins. Houses were destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were unjustly detained for years or even decades. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the fighting. Many people are still missing.
Nerma Jelacic of the International Commission for Justice and Accountability, who has collected evidence against the Syrian government's figures for years, said it would take time and much debate for Syrians to design a healthy accountability process. .
“These are things that take time and don’t happen overnight,” she said.
But there is great pressure on Syria's new leaders to start punishing the old ones, and interim authorities in the capital Damascus have vowed to do so.
In a December post on Telegram, Syria's de facto leader, Ahmed al-Shara, said: “We will hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and military personnel involved in the torture of the Syrian people. We will have no mercy in pursuing this.” He added that he would soon publish “List No. 1” of senior officials “involved in the torture of Syrian citizens.”
Tracking down such a person would be difficult, if not impossible. Al-Assad has taken refuge in Russia, but it is unlikely Russia will extradite him. Many of his top officials have disappeared, with some reportedly hiding in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
Still, exiled Syrian human rights organizations began laying the groundwork more than a decade ago, collecting evidence for prosecutions in other countries and hoping for one day in their own country.
But Fernando Travesi, executive director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, which has worked with these Syrian organizations, said authorities must first build public trust by building a state that meets people's needs before launching prosecutions in Syria. I warned you that you should get it.
This would avoid the failures of countries like Tunisia, where many people became angry and disillusioned with the lack of economic development in the years following the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions. By 2021, Tunisians were turning to their nascent democracy and supporting an increasingly authoritarian president. Efforts to bring feared members of the security services and regime aides to justice are now functionally suspended.
“Processes of truth, justice and accountability need to come from institutions that have some level of legitimacy and credibility among the public. Otherwise, it's a waste of time,” Travesi said. Providing critical services would encourage Syrians to see the government “as an instrument of repression, not an instrument of repression,” he added. It meets my needs. ”
The transitional government helps refugees who left the country years ago obtain new identification documents, decides what happens to property stolen or seized during the war, and provides reliable electricity and running water. Basic and important measures can be taken, such as: Humanitarian aid and economic improvements need to be realized, but this may only be possible with help from other countries.
And all this needs to be done in an impartial manner, otherwise Syrians may see accountability efforts as selective or politically driven. After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq in 2003, the US-led occupation forces and successive governments purged and blacklisted even young officials of the former ruling party without due process, but this led to Analysts said that confidence had been eroded.
“The only way to heal wounds with other communities is to ensure that they are fairly represented,” Asfari said.
Syrian authorities have shown understanding. They repeatedly pledged to respect minority rights and promised amnesty for ordinary soldiers forced to serve in Mr. al-Assad's army. Most government employees are allowed to remain in place to keep the agency running.
Stephen J. Rapp, a former international prosecutor and former U.S. ambassador for global justice who has worked on human rights abuses in Syria for more than a decade, said any prosecution “has to be a good process. If it's not, the outcome will be… It will look like it's settled,” he said. “And that can play an important role in reconciling society and, for example, moderating reconciliation efforts for the children of parents who committed these crimes.”
Further complicating matters, in the chaos that followed al-Assad's fall, some of the documents crucial to launching a prosecution were lost to regime prisons and intelligence archives, where they were looted, plundered and set on fire. Jelačić said that it had been damaged. International Justice and Accountability Commission.
Because Syria remains under wartime sanctions, her group and others seeking to protect these documents for future use in court are unable to operate in large parts of the country, hampering their efforts. is further endangered.
Wartime mass graves and torture devices are just the clearest evidence of the abuses overseen by al-Assad and his father, Hafez.
Almost all Syrians have been wronged in some way by the previous regime. So prosecuting individuals for crimes committed during civil wars is not enough, say veterans of judicial work in other countries that have experienced political transitions.
Rapp called for a “larger truth-telling process” that would help “really begin to understand this system of state repression that has been Syria for the past 54 years and this murderous machine that has been Syria” since 2011.
One model is post-apartheid South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony from victims and perpetrators of rights violations, offered compensation to victims, and in some cases granted amnesty.
Jelacic said Syria would need to take broader account of the legacy of the Assad regime, which “has not contributed to division, but has contributed to healing.”
Experts say that before the trial begins, Syria will overhaul its police and court systems, create a legal framework to deal with rights violations, and perhaps create special courts to prosecute the most serious crimes. said it should. Equally urgent priorities are figuring out what happened to the estimated 136,000 people who remain missing after being arrested by the Assad regime and identifying bodies found in mass graves. .
But Syria cannot wait long to prosecute former regime officials. Slow official justice leaves room for angry people to take matters into their own hands, potentially starting a cycle of violence and deepening sectarian divisions. Already, there have been reports of sporadic reprisal killings and threats against minorities supported by the Assad regime.
After the Tunisian revolution, long delays in bringing cases against former security officials added to the public sense that Tunisia's new democracy was bankrupt.
Tunisian lawyer Lamia Farhani has long sought justice for the shooting death of her brother during a protest against the previous government in 2011, but her country's disillusionment with democracy under current president Qais Said He said he had allowed the demolition of the building.
“We had a nascent democracy, but it failed at the first storm,” she said. “And this happened because there was no real reconciliation.”
