Protecting evidence 'best hope' to uncover truth about people missing in Syria, experts say

Now that Syria has fallen, chances of finding others alive appear to be 'very limited', expert tells The National

Inside Syria's notorious Sednaya Prison. Reuters

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There is an urgent need in Syria to protect evidence and preserve crime scenes, including mass grave sites, to ensure forensic proof and future accountability, experts have warned.

“For all those Syrians who do not find their loved ones among the freed, this evidence may be their best hope to uncover the truth about their missing relatives,” Lynn Welchman, member of the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry, said on Monday. “They have a right to the truth, and the evidence must not be destroyed or tampered with.”

The commission urged Syria’s caretaker government to protect arrest and detention files where they were discovered, ensuring their preservation for future justice processes. Trials addressing these crimes must be “public, transparent and undertaken with full respect for fair trial rights”.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 100,000 people have died in Syria's jails and detention centres since 2011.

Jeremy Sarkin, a research professor of law at Nova University in Lisbon, expressed concern over the removal of vital documents from prisons.

Syrians search for loved ones in Sednaya prison

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“Now that Syria has fallen, the chances of finding other people alive seem to be very limited,” he told The National. “It’s a bit worrisome that people went into these prisons and removed all the documentation … and that documentation is obviously vital to find people.

“And there should be an appeal for everybody who took that information to return it to the authorities so the information can be used by everybody else.”

Mr Sarkin's proposal for a system to deal with missing and disappeared people in Syria was accepted by the UN General Assembly in June 2023 and is being formulated. The UN has stressed that the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic would be a humanitarian initiative and not a legal one, with victims' families free to take the material collected and pursue action through the courts.

When asked whether Syrians should pursue justice locally or through international courts, Mr Sarkin emphasised the need for both approaches.

“There were 16 vetoes at the Security Council to create a mechanism to hold Syrians accountable. I don't think Russia still will agree. So I think the international mechanism is not going to be created.”

Speaking to The National, Syrian human rights activist and regime prison survivor Ahmad Helmi called for justice for the thousands of victims of torture and killings under former Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.

“I want every single commander involved in the disappearance system to spend the rest of their lives in prison listening to the stories of the families of the disappeared,” said Mr Helmi who, after three years of imprisonment and torture, founded the Ta’afi initiative, a Syrian survivor-led human rights organisation, in 2017.

“I want them to publicly apologise and to attend hearings when the families are telling their stories, and I want the rest who are not high in the chain of command to be punished by digging mass graves and assisting the families.”

People search for human remains at a trench believed to be used as a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus. AFP

Mr Sarkin said cases were continuing in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland as part of efforts to hold Syrian officials accountable. “That process will obviously continue,” he said.

He also stressed the importance of local justice in Syria. "I believe there's going to be some form of amnesty for lower-level people, but the more senior people need to be held accountable for what they've done.”

Meanwhile, UN envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen on Monday visited Sednaya prison in Damascus, where he met mothers of disappeared people, those who had been recently liberated and lawyers handling related cases.

Mr Pedersen said the UN remains deeply committed to supporting families, survivors and the work of UN organisations focused on seeking truth, accountability and prosecutions.

He met Hayat Tahrir Al Sham leader Ahmad Al Shara and was briefed on the challenges and priorities of the Syrian people. Mr Pedersen has called for international sanctions to be lifted to allow faster rebuilding.