Syrian atrocities are ‘greatest crimes’ this century, UN chief says

Only a handful of Syrian war criminals have faced justice as the conflict reaches 10-year milestone

Syrian soldiers are seen cheering President Bashar Al Assad during his visit to Al Habit on the southern edges of the Idlib province, in a picture released on October 22, 2019. AFP / Syrian Presidency Facebook page

A Turkish gendarme retrieves the body of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi from a beach in Turkey. Reuters

The guided-missile destroyer 'USS Porter' conducts strikes while in the Mediterranean Sea, on April 7, 2017. AFP / US NAVY

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on October 31, 2013, shows the remains of a mortar after an alleged mortar attack by rebel fighters on the Damascus mixed Christian-Druze suburb of Jaramana. AFP / Sana

Displaced Syrians from the south of Idlib province sit out in the open in the countryside west of the town of Dana in the north-west Syrian region on December 23, 2019. AFP

This picture shows a general view of an overcrowded displacement camp near the village of Qah near the Turkish border in Syria's north-west Idlib province, on October 28, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic crisis. AFP

A picture taken on March 23, 2019, shows the last ISIS bastion in the eastern Syrian village of Baghuz after the defeat of the group. The Kurdish-led forces pronounced the end of ISIS regime on March 23, 2019, after flushing out the diehard militants from their very last bastion in eastern Syria. AFP

Anti-government activists gesture as they gather on the streets of Daraa, 100 kilometres south of the capital Damascus, on March 23, 2011. AFP

Syria's President Bashar Al Assad heading a cabinet meeting in the presidential palace in Damascus in 2013. Sana / AFP

A picture taken on October 3, 2015 shows a Russian army pilot leaving the cockpit of a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia. AFP

Members of the Free Syrian Army raise their weapons during a patrol in Idlib in north-west Syria on February 18, 2012. AFP

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is shown shaking hands with government troops in Eastern Ghouta, in the leader's first trip to the former rebel enclave outside Damascus in years, in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on March 18, 2018. Syrian Presidency Facebook page / AFP

Militant fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province, on June 30, 2014. Reuters

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for justice for victims of torture and other atrocities in Syria's decade-long war, saying civilians had suffered the "greatest crimes the world has witnessed this century".

Speaking before the 10th anniversary of the start of anti-government protests that spiralled into civil war, Mr Guterres denounced widespread torture, illegal detention and chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Last month there was a landmark prosecution of a former Syrian government secret police officer by a court in Germany, but there are concerns that such trials are rare and that many war crimes will go unpunished.

“It is impossible to fully fathom the extent of the devastation in Syria but its people have endured some of the greatest crimes the world has witnessed this century,” Mr Guterres said in New York on Wednesday.

“The scale of the atrocities shocks the conscience. Their perpetrators must be held to account if there is to be sustainable peace in Syria.”

Mr Guterres criticised forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, foreign forces involved in the conflict and terrorist militias that have “subjected many Syrians to unimaginable violence and repression”.

The warring forces devastated towns and villages, bombed schools and hospitals, blocked aid flows, and used nerve gas and other deadly chemical weapons in atrocities that flout international law, he said.

“The situation remains a living nightmare,” Mr Guterres said. “Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died. Millions have been displaced.

"Countless others remain illegally detained and often tortured, missing, disappeared or living in uncertainty and deprivation.”

Millions of people left Syria and millions more have fled their homes since a crackdown by the government on protesters in March 2011 led to a civil war that has dragged in Russia, Iran, Turkey, the US and others.

A court in Germany last month sentenced former Syrian secret police officer Eyad Al Gharib to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in the detention and torture of anti-government protesters.

Rights groups hailed the first successful prosecution of a former Syrian regime official for crimes against humanity, and the use of universal jurisdiction by German prosecutors, but also noted that most Syrian war criminals have eluded justice.