A United Nations body working to ensure justice for war crimes committed by all sides in Syria has provided information and evidence to 12 national jurisdictions, its chief disclosed on Monday as the country marked a decade of war.
Videos, photos, satellite imagery, "exfiltrated documents", witness statements and forensic samples constitute "the best-documented situation since the end of the Second World War", said Catherine Marchi-Uhel of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism investigating the most serious crimes in Syria.
"It doesn't make the justice path easy, but it makes it possible," Ms Marchi-Uhel, a former French judge, told a panel event hosted by Britain.
Her small team in Geneva is building a repository of the large amount of evidence and information and corroborated it in accordance with international criminal law standards, she said.
"We are co-operating with and assisting investigations and prosecutions in 12 different jurisdictions," Ms Marchi-Uhel said.
We have received 100 requests for assistance in relation to 84 distinct investigations and prosecutions."
It had shared information and evidence for 39 of the 100 investigations.
Ms Marchi-Uhel, referring to the 12 jurisdictions, later told Reuters: "A large proportion are in Europe".
A court in the German city of Koblenz last month sentenced a former member of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's security services to four and a half years in prison for abetting the torture of civilians, the first such verdict for crimes against humanity in the Syrian civil war.
Paulo Pinheiro, who heads a separate panel of UN war crimes investigators that keeps a confidential list of suspects, told the Monday's event: "To date, the Commission of Inquiry has compiled initial information on more than 3,200 alleged individual perpetrators.
"That includes individuals from all sides of the conflict, including government and pro-government forces, anti-government armed groups, and United Nations-listed terrorist organisations, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and ISIS," he said.
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Kurdish demonstrators hurl rocks at a Turkish military vehicle, during a joint Turkish-Russian patrol near the town of Al Muabbadah in the northeastern part of Hassakah in 2019. AFP -
A member of the Khabour Guards (MNK) Assyrian Syrian militia, affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), walks in the ruins of the Assyrian Church of the Virgin Mary, which was previously destroyed by ISIS. AFP -
Kamal, the father of an eight-year-old girl who was fatally wounded along with his son Hamed (sitting at left on background), cries while being treated in a local hospital in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo in 2012. AFP -
A woman and her baby are seen through the scope of an opposition fighter sniper gun, as she flees the Saif Al Dawla neighbourhood of the Syrian northern city of Aleppo, amid heavy street fighting. AFP -
A woman cries as she looks at her house in Raqa, after a Kurdish-led force expelled the Islamic State group from the northern Syrian city in 2017. AFP -
A man carries a young girl who was injured in a reported barrel-bomb attack by government forces in Kallaseh district in the northern city of Aleppo in 2014. AFP -
A female Syrian soldier from the Republican Guard commando battalion fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) during clashes with rebels in the restive Jobar area, in eastern Damascus in 2015. AFP -
A woman reacts as she holds her daughter during an air strike by Syrian air force near her house in the Ahad neighbourhood of Aleppo in 2013. AFP -
A Kurdish Syrian woman walks with her child past the ruins of the town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab. AFP
