Concern about destruction of evidence of crimes in Syria
Published: Tuesday, Dec 17th 2024, 14:50
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In Syria, possible evidence of crimes committed by the deposed regime and other actors against the population is disappearing every day. A group of experts set up by the United Nations in 2016 wants to help secure such material on site as soon as possible, as its chairman Robert Petit said in Geneva.
With the case of the Assad government, there is now an opportunity to collect evidence at the crime scenes, said Petit. The former Canadian prosecutor has asked the Syrian embassies at the United Nations in New York and Geneva for entry permits for his team.
The transitional government is aware of how important it is to secure material, said Petit. He also had a long list of names of possible perpetrators, some of whom had fled abroad.
283 terabytes of data
The group of experts is known by the acronym "IIIM". It is an international, impartial and independent mechanism designed to collect evidence of crimes committed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in March 2011.
In recent years, 283 terabytes of data have already been collected, including by civil society groups. In several countries, courts have already used the group's documents and analyses to successfully convict criminals.
©Keystone/SDA
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