Criminal Inquiries Loom Over al-Assad’s Use of Chemical Arms in Syria
Investigations in France and Germany could lead to prosecutions of
President Bashar al-Assad and members of his upper echelon over one of
the Syrian war’s signature atrocities.
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A picture of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in Douma, outside
Damascus, in 2018. The government is accused of using chemical weapons
in Douma in August 2013.
A picture of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in Douma, outside
Damascus, in 2018. The government is accused of using chemical weapons
in Douma in August 2013.Credit...Marko Djurica/Reuters
ByMarlise Simons <https://www.nytimes.com/by/marlise-simons>
* NYT, March 2, 2021Updated8:18 a.m. ET
PARIS — Chemical munitions experts have for years compiled information
that Syria’s government has used these banned weapons against its own
people, a war crime that so far has gone unpunished and been dismissed
with a sneer by President Bashar al-Assad.
Now the first criminal inquiries that target Mr. al-Assad and his
associates over the use of chemical weapons may soon get underway.
In a major step to hold Mr. al-Assad and his circle accountable for some
of the worst atrocities committed in the decade-old Syria conflict,
judges at a special war crimes unit in France’s palace of justice have
received a complaint about chemical weapons attacks in Syria, filed by
three international human rights groups.
The complaint, which lawyers said the judges would likely accept,
requests a criminal investigation of Mr. al-Assad, his brother, Maher,
and a litany of senior advisers and military officials that formed the
chain of command.
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Together with a similar complaint filed in Germany last October, the
French complaint, submitted Monday and made public Tuesday, opens a new
front aimed at ensuring that some form of justice for chemical weapons
crimes is exacted on Mr. al-Assad and his hierarchy.
If nothing else, the criminal inquiries in France and Germany could
vastly complicate the future for Mr. al-Assad, who has emerged largely
victorious in the Syrian war, but with a pariah status that has blocked
the international aid necessary to rebuild his country.
Getting such aid could become even more difficult if Mr. al-Assad and
his upper echelons are defendants in prosecutions for war crimes in
European courts, even if they consider such proceedings illegitimate.
Nor are millions of Syrians who fled to Europe and elsewhere as refugees
likely to return home.
Steve Kostas, the senior lawyer of the group that filed the complaints
in France, said it focused on the August 2013 events in the city of
Douma and the region of Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus — coordinated
attacks that the United States government said killed more than 1,400
people, making them the world’s deadliest use of chemical weapons in
this century.
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ImageA United Nations team in August 2013 with a sample from one of the
sites in the Damascus area where a chemical weapons attack was suspected.
A United Nations team in August 2013 with a sample from one of the sites
in the Damascus area where a chemical weapons attack was
suspected.Credit...Mohamed Abdullah/Reuters
The victims of those assaults, who inhaled sarin nerve agent or chlorine
fumes from bombs, are only a small proportion of the estimated 400,000
people killed since the Syria war began in March of 2011.
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More than 300 chemical weapons attacks in Syria have been documented by
experts, including photographs and videos of adults and children, seized
by convulsions, gasping for air and often suffocating.
Many of these images have been publicized and shocked the world. To
date, no one has had to answer for them.
“We want the French to conduct an independent investigation and
ultimately to issue arrest warrants against those who bear
responsibility for these crimes against civilians,’’ said Mr. Kostas, a
senior lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative who is based in
London.
‘’We know high-level perpetrators will not be arrested soon,’’ he said.
But cases must be built now, he said, to ensure prosecutions in the future.
The other two groups participating are Syrian Archive, a documentation
center in Berlin, and theSyrian Center for Media and Freedom of
Expression, <https://scm.bz/en/>based in Paris.
Among the witnesses they can bring, they say, are not only survivors of
attacks but former members of the government who have been linked to the
banned chemical arms arsenal or have knowledge of its workings.
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The filing comes amid speculation over moves by some countries to seek
closer ties with Damascus, an informal recognition that Mr. al-Assad has
not been defeated. There has also been talk of planning a reconstruction
phase, which would yield important contracts and facilitate the return
of refugees.
But Western countries, even those who have taken in significant numbers
of refugees, are adamant that impunity for the crimes is not an option
for any future peace deal or normalization. Until now, only limited
steps have been taken toward holding any senior Syrians accountable.
Russia and China have blocked the road to the International Criminal
Court for any prosecution of Syrian atrocities by using their veto in
the United Nations Security Council, which could grant I.C.C. jurisdiction.
“After 10 years and all these crimes, there’s no reaction from the
international community, so the victims themselves are trying to knock
on all doors,” said Mazen Darwish, an activist and former prisoner from
Syria who founded the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
“People are dying every day,” he said.
Image
Hassan Youssef, a victim of a sarin nerve agent attack in the rebel-held
village of Khan Sheikhoun in 2017.
Hassan Youssef, a victim of a sarin nerve agent attack in the rebel-held
village of Khan Sheikhoun in 2017.Credit...Omar Haj Kadour/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
In the absence of any international court that has jurisdiction over
Syrian crimes, a patchwork of efforts for accountability has been
underway for some time. Several countries, including Germany, Sweden and
France, are prosecuting or have already convicted individuals found
among Europe’s many Syrian refugees.
They have mostly been low-level members of the Islamic State or of the
Syrian security forces, accused of human rights abuses.
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But the complaint filed in Paris, and a similar one filed by the same
group in Germany, is aiming for the first time for the top tier of the
Syrian government over the chemical weapons issue — both for past
attacks and what the complaints call a secretive program that flagrantly
flouts international law.
The group’s complaint in Germany was submitted in October before the
federal public prosecutor in Karlsruhe. It focuses on the sarin nerve
agent attack in Eastern Ghouta in 2013 and in the rebel-held village of
Khan Sheikhoun in 2017.
Both France and Germany accept a form of universal jurisdiction, which
grants their national courts the power to prosecute individuals accused
of heinous offenses committed anywhere.
Mr. Kostas said France’s law on responsibility of corporations could
also provide the justification to introduce evidence on companies that
supplied chemicals and equipment to Syria for its banned chemical weapon
arsenal.
The United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons conducted inquiries after the 2013 attack in Syria, but the
evidence they amassed has never led to any accountability and never
identified perpetrators by name.
The request for a criminal investigation is based partly on a two-year
study of Syria’s chemical weapons program that goes beyond what other
international inquires have done, Mr. Kostas said. The study relied on a
multitude of sources, he said, including defectors, former insiders,
employees, engineers and people linked directly or with knowledge of the
program.
Image
Praying before burying victims of the 2017 attack in Khan Sheikhun.
Praying before burying victims of the 2017 attack in Khan Sheikhun.
Credit...Fadi Al-Halabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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Gregory Koblentz, an expert in chemical and biological weapons and
professor at George Mason University who reviewed the study, said that
while there was much open source material, “it brings to light new
information from defectors and insiders.”
Mr. Koblentz called it the “most comprehensive and detailed account of
the Syrian weapons program available perhaps outside the intelligence
services. It maps out new details on the chain of command and shows how
large and complex this program was. And it can name names.”
The complaint filed in Paris also makes ample use of evidence from the
Syria Archive, which has stored more than three million videos sent by
activists from Syria. It also draws on data from the Global Public
Policy Institute, a research group in Berlin.
Tobias Schneider, a researcher at the institute, said it had verified
349 attacks in the past decade, “significantly more than has been
commonly known.” The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons, by contrast, has only studied 39 attacks because of what the
organization has described as limited resources.
Mr. Darwish, who spent three years imprisoned in Syria and now lives in
Paris, said the fight against chemical weapons was more than just about
the attacks in his country.
“If they’re not banished, no place will be safe,” he said. “What’s next?
They could be used on the Champs-Élysées.”
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