(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Drowned out by all the dramatic developments in Syria, German prosecutors have charged two officials in the Bashar al-Assad regime with crimes against humanity, including torture, murder and rape. The men, members of Syria’s infamous General Intelligence Directorate, were arrested in Germany in February; a third official was nabbed in France. The trial will begin in Koblenz early in 2020.
The prosecution of these men is important for all the obvious reasons: accountability and punishment for crimes, justice for victims. But the timing serves another useful purpose. It reminds us that for all the news about the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Turkey’s military invasion, a Kurdish humanitarian crisis and Russian patrols, the Assad regime has perpetrated the overwhelming majority of the horrors visited upon Syria.
Human-rights agencies reckon that more than 500,000 people have been killed, millions wounded, and 12 million displaced since 2011. Al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State, even at the 2015 peak of its brutal campaign of murder and mayhem, accounted for only a fraction of the carnage wrought by the regime in Damascus.
Assad’s war crimes are being documented in Europe, allowing his victims hope for justice. Cases have been filed against the dictator at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but how far they will go is unclear: Syria is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Russia and China have vetoed efforts to broaden the ICC’s mandate and allow it to set up a special tribunal for Syria.
The German prosecutors may get more traction: They are citing universal jurisdiction, which allows suspects — especially in instances of war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity — to be tried there, regardless of where the alleged crimes took place.
This move might smack of hypocrisy to those seeking justice for victims of Islamic State, and specifically the prosecution of German nationals who traveled to Syria to fight for al-Baghdadi’s terrorist group. Like other European countries whose citizens joined Islamic State and have since been captured and are being held in Kurdish prison camps, Germany has been loath to bring them back home, despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump. How, their victims might reasonably ask, can Germany invoke universal jurisdiction in the cases against Assad’s officials, while conveniently leaving the German fighters to be brought to justice somewhere else?
That complaint is legitimate, and one that Germany and its neighbors will have to answer. But it does not detract from the utility and importance of the case in Koblenz. One of the two Syrians, named Anwar R., is thought to have headed a GID unit in Damascus in 2011-12. It had a jail where more than 4,000 prisoners — most of them members of opposition groups — were brutally interrogated. Anwar R. is accused of murder in 58 cases, as well as rape and aggravated sexual assault.
Prosecutors say the second defendant, named Eyad A., aided in two killings and the torture of at least 30 people, all in 2011.
Evidence against the men was gathered after a 2015 United Nations exhibition featuring gruesome images of corpses of torture victims, taken by “Caesar,” a member of the Syrian military police who fled the country. The photographs were also displayed in the U.S. Congress.
But Anwar R. and Eyad A. represent only a few drops in Assad’s sea of blood: The charges against them cover only the early months of the regime’s crackdown against the pro-democracy movement. The depredations committed by what State Department officials have described as a “machinery of death” became much more savage.
German officials are investigating dozens of other Syrian officials. Last year, they issued an international arrest warrant for Jamil Hassan, head of intelligence in the Syrian Air Force, accusing him of overseeing the torture, rape and murder of “at least hundreds of people between 2011 and 2013.” The U.S. supported Germany’s request for extradition of Hassan from Lebanon, and has imposed sanctions on him. But he returned to Damascus, where even if he is vulnerable to the vagaries of Syrian politics, he remains safe from international law — for now, at least.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and the wider Islamic world.
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