Syria faces a major challenge in seeking justice for the crimes of the Assad regime

There seems to be no bounds to the dark revelations revealed by the fall of the 54-year-old Assad regime in Syria.

It has emptied prisons, revealing torture tools used against peaceful protesters and other opponents of the government. Piles of official documents record the presence of thousands of detainees. Morgues and mass graves contain emaciated, broken victims, or at least some of them.

Many others have Not found yet.

Because of these and many other atrocities, Syrians want justice. The rebel coalition that ousted President Bashar al-Assad last month He pledged to pursue and prosecute him Prominent figures in the regime for crimes including murder, unjust imprisonment, torture, and gassing against their own people.

“Most Syrians will say they can only end this dark era that has lasted 54 years when they bring these people to justice,” said Ayman Asfari, head of Madaniyah, a network of Syrian human rights organizations and other civil groups.

But even if we assume that the new authorities are able to track down the suspects, it will be difficult to achieve accountability in a weak, divided and damaged country like Syria. The experiences of other Arab countries whose authoritarian regimes have collapsed bear witness to the challenges: none of those countries – neither Egypt, nor Iraq, nor Tunisia – have succeeded in securing comprehensive and lasting justice for crimes committed in previous eras.

Syria faces some distinct obstacles. The country’s new de facto leaders come from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, while the top positions in the ousted regime were dominated by Alawites, a religious minority. This means that prosecutions for abuses committed under Assad risk inflaming sectarian tensions in Syria.

For years, the judicial system was little more than a tool in Mr. Assad’s hands, leaving him ill-equipped to deal with comprehensive and complex human rights violations. Several thousand more Syrians could be involved than can be prosecuted, raising questions about how to deal with lower-level officials.

After years of war PenaltiesWith corruption and mismanagement, just addressing the damage during the transition to a new government is an enormous task.

Nine out of 10 Syrians live in poverty. Cities fall into ruin. Homes have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were unjustly detained for years or decades. It was hundreds of thousands Killed in combat. Many of them are still missing.

Nerma Jelacic of the International Justice and Accountability Commission, which has been collecting evidence against Syrian regime figures for years, said Syrians will need time and many discussions to design a proper accountability process.

“These things take time, they never happen overnight,” she added.

But Syria’s new leaders are under enormous pressure to start punishing the old leaders, and the transitional authorities in the capital, Damascus, have promised to do so.

Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the de facto leader of Syria, said in press statements: “We will not hesitate to hold criminals, murderers, and security and military officers involved in torturing the Syrian people accountable.” Post on Telegram In December. He added that they will soon publish “List No. 1” of the names of senior officials “involved in torturing the Syrian people.”

Chasing such numbers will be difficult, if not impossible. Mr. Assad has found refuge in Russia, which is unlikely to abandon him. Many of his senior aides have disappeared, some of whom are said to be hiding in Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates.

However, Syrian human rights groups in exile began laying the groundwork more than a decade ago. Collect evidence for trials Which were installed in other countries – and one day, they hoped, in their own.

But Fernando Travesi, executive director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, who has worked with such Syrian groups, warned that before launching prosecutions in Syria, authorities must first gain the trust of citizens by building a state that meets their needs.

Doing so would avoid the mistakes made by a country like Tunisia, where the lack of economic progress in the years following the 2011 Arab Spring revolution left many people behind. Bitter and disappointed. By 2021, Tunisians had turned against their nascent democracy, throwing their support to a president who was growing. Increasingly authoritarian. Efforts to bring feared members of the security services close to the regime to justice have now been suspended.

“Any process of truth, justice and accountability must come from institutions that have some legitimacy and credibility with the population, otherwise it will be a waste of time,” Mr. Travesi said. He added that providing vital services would encourage Syrians to view the government as “not an instrument of oppression; She takes care of my needs.”

The transitional government can take basic and vital steps such as helping refugees who left years ago obtain a new identity, deciding what should happen to property stolen or occupied during the war, and providing stable electricity and running water. However, it will need to provide humanitarian aid and economic improvements It might just be possible With the help of other countries.

It must do all of this in a fair way, otherwise Syrians may see accountability efforts as selective or politically motivated. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the US-led occupation and successive governments purged and blacklisted even junior officials in the former ruling party without following due process. Analysts said Undermining confidence in the new regime.

“The only way to heal wounds with other communities is to make sure they are represented fairly,” Mr. Asfari said.

The Syrian authorities indicate that they understand this. They have repeatedly pledged to respect the rights of minorities and promised amnesty for ordinary soldiers forced to serve in Assad’s army. Most government employees have been allowed to remain in their positions to keep the institutions running.

Stephen J. said: Raab, a former international prosecutor and former US ambassador for global justice who has worked on Syrian abuses for more than a decade, said any prosecution “has to be a good process, otherwise it will look like a score-settling.” “This can play a key role in community reconciliation and defuse efforts to settle scores, for example, against the children of parents who committed these crimes.”

Adding to the complexity, some documents that would be crucial to any prosecutions were damaged in the chaos that followed Assad’s fall, with the regime’s prisons and intelligence agency archives ransacked, ransacked or burned, said Amnesty International’s Ms. Jelacic. Commission on International Justice and Accountability.

Because Syria remains Under war sanctionsHer group and others trying to protect these papers for future use in court cannot operate in most parts of the country, further jeopardizing their efforts.

The mass graves and wartime torture devices are just the stark evidence of the abuses overseen by Mr. Assad and the armed forces. His father is Hafez.

Almost every Syrian was, to some extent, subjected to injustice by the previous regime. Therefore, it is not enough to prosecute individuals for crimes committed during the civil war, say veterans of justice efforts in other countries that have gone through political transition.

Mr Raab called for a “larger truth-telling exercise” that could help “begin to understand the system of state repression that Syria has been for the past 54 years, and this killing machine that Syria has been” since 2011.

One model can be Post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission In South Africa, which heard the testimonies of victims and perpetrators of rights violations, it provided compensation to the victims and, in some cases, granted amnesty.

Ms. Jelačić said Syria would need a broader reckoning with the legacy of the Assad regime, which “does not contribute to divisions, but contributes to healing wounds.”

Experts said that before trials begin, Syria must reform its police and court systems, build a legal framework to deal with rights violations, and perhaps create a special court to try the most serious crimes. An equally urgent priority is finding out what happened to the estimated 136,000 people still missing after being detained by the Assad regime, and identifying the bodies discovered in mass graves.

But Syria cannot wait too long before putting former regime officials on trial. The slowness of formal justice leaves room for angry people to take matters into their own hands, which can lead to cycles of violence and deepen sectarian divisions. Scattered revenge killings and threats against minorities favored by the Assad regime have already been reported.

After the Tunisian revolution Long delays in filing cases Attacks against former security officials increased citizens’ feelings that their new democracy was bankrupt.

Lamia Farhani, a Tunisian lawyer who has long sought justice for the shooting death of her brother while protesting against the former regime in 2011, said her country’s disillusionment had allowed the current president, Kais Saied, to dismantle its democracy.

“We had a nascent democracy that failed at the first storm,” she said. And all this happened because there was no real reconciliation.”