Date: Monday, April 10, 2017
Time: 11:50 am – 12:50 pm
Location: 360 Dineen Hall (Feinberg Lecture Hall)
Panel discussion with:
David M. Crane speaks to The World at One, a news program broadcast on BBC Radio 4, in the wake of the alleged chemical attack against Syrian citizens in Idlib Province on April 4, 2017, a stronghold for rebels opposed to the Assad regime in Damascus.
Crane explains how accountability for this and other war crimes will work, that the process of accounting for these crimes might take years, that forms of justice mechanisms being considered include a Syrian-based system, and that some of the evidence a prosecutor may one day use comes from work he and his students are doing as part of the Syrian Accountability Project at Syracuse Law.
David Crane commentary starts at 15m 00s.
See also …
(Orient TV | March 2, 2017) Amnesty International’s report on the execution of more than 13,000 prisoners at Sednaya Prison, which is considered the most prominent development in documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, and how it helps in the case against Bashar al-Assad and his regime.
Accountability in the Syrian conflict was the focus of a daylong event hosted by the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University on Oct. 6, 2016.
The dialogue analyzed the international community’s response to the Syrian conflict and its effects, as well as the challenges to reporting the war, developing political solutions and seeking justice for victims. Participants also explored how the international community captures news and images from the conflict, investigates alleged war crimes and human rights violations and protects refugees. They also discussed lessons learned from this conflict that might inform the response to future conflicts. The interactive event was designed as a “fishbowl” conversation among academics, policy makers, human rights advocates, journalists and the audience.
Ken Harper, director of the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement, and Lorraine Branham, dean of the Newhouse School, offered opening remarks, and David Crane, founding director of the Syrian Accountability Project in the Syracuse University College of Law, gave the closing remarks.
(BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight | Feb. 7, 2017) Amnesty report says government is behind the execution of thousands at a Syrian jail – we talk to a former detainee … (Professor Crane’s segment lasts from 6m55s to 12m40s).
(Times of London | Feb. 7, 2017) On Monday and Wednesday nights, prisoners in Sednaya military jail in Syria are frogmarched from their cells, taken to a basement, tortured and, after a two-minute “trial”, are hanged. According to the latest report by Amnesty International, up to 50 people at a time have been put to death in this way. In a single prison, 13,000 have thus been systematically killed since the uprising began against the regime of Bashar al-Assad almost six years ago.
Assad has blood on his hands. This is scarcely a secret. In the recent siege of Aleppo, at least 80 civilians were shot at point-blank range by his troops. Many hundreds, including 90 children, were killed during Syrian and Russian bombardment. War crimes have punctuated Assad’s desperate struggle to stay in power. Hospitals and rescue workers have been targeted. Barrel bombs, sometimes spiked with chlorine, have been rolled on to targets by Syrian aircraft. Cluster and incendiary weapons have been used. This is a war crime, since they fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in chemical warfare attacks, according to the Syrian-American Medical Society, which has worked with about 100 hospitals in the country. In Assad’s war against his own people, towns have been starved into submission.
By any measure Assad should be in the dock in the International Criminal Court (ICC) facing charges of crimes against humanity. Islamic State, too, has a bestial record and even the Free Syrian Army has committed crimes, but nothing on the scale practised by Assad’s killers. Lawyers working for the US-based Syrian Accountability Project have compiled a 20-page indictment against Assad. Based in Syracuse University, New York, they have been forwarding names of regime suspects, alleged offences, photographs and supporting evidence to the Hague, home of the ICC.
Yet the chances of the Syrian leader standing trial any time soon are remote. Original peace talks between the regime, the moderate opposition and the international community established the principle of a transitional government which would ease Assad out of power. These Geneva negotiations fell apart and have been superseded, since the flattening of Aleppo, by negotiations run by Russia, Turkey and Iran in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. They make no mention of the departure of the Syrian dictator, nor any transitional leadership, and talk only vaguely of a “political process”. Russia has found a way of keeping its man in power in Damascus …
To read the full editorial, click here.
Following his work helping to draft a United Nations resolution “to establish a special team to ‘collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence’ as well as to prepare cases on war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the conflict in Syria,” INSCT Affiliated Faculty Member David Crane, Professor of Practice at Syracuse University College of Law, is now assisting the UN in setting up the independent justice mechanism required by the resolution, which was passed on Dec. 21, 2016.
According to the UN News Centre, the independent justice mechanism will be established in phases, and UN Secretary-General Antonió Guterres will announce the mechanism’s head by the end of February 2017. Meanwhile, Crane has been asked by Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad of Jordan, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, to help draft the mechanism’s “Terms of Reference,” to define the purpose, scope, and structure of the mechanism.
One important phase toward setting up the mechanism—formally called the “International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Those Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes Under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic Since March 2011”—was passed on Jan. 26, 2016. As reported by UN News Centre, “The United Nations … announced that the mechanism will be headed by a senior judge or prosecutor with extensive criminal investigations and prosecutions experience.” The mechanism’s head will be assisted by a deputy and a secretariat.
The UN News Centre notes that the mechanism will begin with two purposes: “collecting, consolidating, preserving, and analyzing evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses” and “preparing files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings, in accordance with international law standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes, in accordance with international law.” The UN also announced that the mechanism will cooperate with, but will be separate from, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
“For the first time the United Nations has set up a permanent office to officially begin the process of collecting data concerning the civil war in Syria and to turn it into evidence for a future local, regional, or international prosecutor,” says Crane. “This is an important political step by the Secretary-General. It procedurally steps around the grid-locked UN Security Council to set up an office that will eventually lead to accountability for the crimes against the Syrian people.”
The mechanism will build on information from Syria already being collected by various justice and human rights groups, including the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP), a group led by Crane and staffed by students at SU Law. Many TV images, photographs, news reports, and social media posts from Syria appear to show a wide variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as torture, chemical attacks, sexual violence, attacks on civilians, siege, denial of humanitarian aid, and more. Not all these documentary or eye-witness accounts can be used in a court, but to find evidence that can be, all accounts must be carefully collected, filed, and analyzed. The UN’s independent justice mechanism has the potential to expedite and standardize this effort.
On Jan. 10, 2017, INSCT Faculty Member David M. Crane joined Andrew Beiter, Education Director, iamsyria.org, at a webinar presented by the New York State Council for the Social Studies (NYSCSS). NYSCSS is a statewide professional organization of school social studies educators.
During the webinar, Crane and Beiter discussed the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the rise of ISIS, and the current situation on the ground, as well as how teachers can approach this topic with students and how students can take action.
Thanks to NYSCSS, this webinar has been released as a video presentation using Adobe Connect. Click here to watch.
Co-founded by Crane, iamsyria.org is a public outreach effort to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Syria, especially aimed at schools. It offers zero-prep, Common Core-friendly lesson plans; educational background articles; ground-truth facts about the civil war; and information on how to take action.
(Re-published from Jurist.org | Jan. 1, 2017) On 21 Dec., 2016, 105 member states of the United Nations General Assembly took an important step forward in seeking justice for the people of Syria. The action-taking was a resolution that paves the way for an independent organization to begin collecting, cataloging, and analyzing data and other criminal information coming out of Syria into proper evidence to be used someday by a local, regional, or international prosecutor someday in order to hold accountable all parties committing international crimes in Syria from March 2011 to the present.
Since the beginning of the civil war in 2011, there have been dozens of efforts by various nongovernmental organizations to collect data on the crimes being committed in Syria. Though laudable in their efforts, this massive amount of data is useless in a court of law. It is unreliable and not authenticated, with no chains of custody or other safeguards. Essentially almost all of the data being collected regarding crimes in Syria is tainted and inadmissible.
Three organizations did begin to emerge that were working in tangent to correct this problem. One of these is the Syrian Accountability Center, which I founded in March of 2011 to create a trial package for a future local, regional, or international prosecutor. It is designed along the same methods I used to investigate and indict President Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity in West Africa. Additionally, two other organizations are doing important work, the Coalition for International Justice and Accountability and the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center. The heads of these three organizations met and briefed various UN ambassadors on the evidence challenges in November. It was there I urged the creation of the accountability center concept.
As we began to consider various mechanisms to cure this problem, an accountability center became apparent, a center run by experienced international criminal law professionals who could take this mass of data already collected, and still coming out of Syria, and turn it into that evidence necessary to hold accountable those parties committing crimes in violation of Syrian and international law.
The international community has spent millions of dollars supporting efforts to build data bases by organizations who in large measure do not have the experience to build a criminal case. The accountability center concept was designed to fix this problem. Throughout Fall 2016, we carefully planned a campaign to garner the support necessary to succeed in creating the accountability center. Under the leadership of ambassadors Christian Weneweser of Lichtenstein and Alya Althani of Qatar various paths were considered from the Security Council, the General Assembly, and possibly a regional organization such as the European Union or the Arab League. The General Assembly was the most realistic pathway to success …
To read the complete article, click here.
UPDATE: According to Reuters, the UN General Assembly passed the resolution “to establish a special team to ‘collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence’ as well as to prepare cases on war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the conflict in Syria” on Dec. 21, 2016. The vote was “105 in favor, 15 against and 52 abstentions. The team will work in coordination with the U.N. Syria Commission of Inquiry.” Read more.
Evidence that war crimes have been committed during the five-year-old Syrian Civil War is hard to ignore. TV images, photographs, news reports, and social media posts from the front lines and throughout Syria have documented the torture of political enemies, the use of chemical weapons, sexual violence as a weapon of war, indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian centers, the siege of cities, attacks on humanitarian efforts, and more.
Not all of this documentary, eyewitness, or anecdotal evidence can be used to bring justice to those who have perpetrated crimes against humanity or war crimes, but in cases where it will be useful to future prosecutors, it must be carefully collected, filed, and analyzed. There are a number of ongoing documentation efforts, one of the most thorough being that of David M. Crane, Professor of Practice at Syracuse Law, INSCT Faculty Member, and Founding Prosecutor of the Special Court of Sierra Leone. Over the past five years Crane has kept track of the evidence of atrocities with help from his students in the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP).
Now Crane is pushing the international community to make further use of his, and others’, documentation by helping to draft a resolution, which is being brought before the United Nations General Assembly, to establish an “International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Those Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes Under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic Since March 2011.”
The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on the resolution on Dec. 21, 2016. The vote’s outcome is hard to predict. Although many in the international community recognize and condemn Syrian atrocities, that does not mean there is political will to create a postconflict justice mechanism for the people of Syria. As The New York Times explains, “The International Criminal Court, whose reason for being is to try the worst perpetrators of the world’s worst war crimes, has no jurisdiction over Syria, which is not a member of the court [and efforts] by the United Nations Security Council to refer the conflict in Syria to the court have been blocked by Russia.”
Nor is there currently any appetite, the article continues, to set up a special tribunal like the one in which Crane prosecuted former Liberian President Charles Taylor, helping to bring justice to the people of Sierra Leone. But, as Crane says, “We have to be seen to be doing something for the people of Syria!”
Specifically, the proposal suggests the UN assist Syrian justice by developing what Crane calls an “accountability center” to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of alleged war crimes, such as that being collected by the SAP. Work done by the accountability center would be “in accordance with international standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes.”
“I proposed this effort to the ambassadors of Qatar and Lichtenstein in September and briefed a dozen ambassadors in November,” explains Crane. “The resolution, which I helped draft, is the result of these conversations. The accountability center concept is a way to standardize the collection of evidence and to build a solid, legally supportable case against those who are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.”
Although its backing would carry a great deal of weight, The New York Times reports that “the United States has not said whether it supports the measure [but it] is separately funding a group of lawyers who are collecting evidence that can be used in future legal proceedings.” Nevertheless, the resolution has received support from one of the most influential, US-based rights organizations. On Dec. 19, 2016, Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a letter urging governments “to support the UN General Assembly resolution … The creation of such a mechanism could deter those contemplating further atrocities against civilians in Syria. Potential perpetrators need to know that the world is watching and they may one day find themselves behind bars. This is fully within the General Assembly’s authority.”
http://un-report.blogspot.com/2016/12/liechtenstein-unga-draft-resolution-on.html
The General Assembly,
¶1 Guided by the Charter of the United Nations,
¶2 Reaffirming its commitment to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,
¶3 Recalling the relevant resolutions of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, in particular Human Rights Council resolution S-17/1 that established the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic,
¶4 Welcoming the ongoing work carried out by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic and recalling its reports1 and the recommendations contained therein,
¶5 Expressing its appreciation for the work carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism and recalling its reports2 and the conclusions contained therein,
¶6 Recognizing the work of Syrian and international civil society actors in documenting violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights law in the Syrian Arab Republic during the conflict,
¶7 Noting with concern the impunity for serious violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights law committed during the conflict, in the Syrian Arab Republic which has provided a fertile ground for further violations and abuses,
¶8 Recalling the statements made by the Secretary-General, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the special procedures of the Human Rights Council that crimes against humanity and war crimes are likely to have been committed in the Syrian Arab Republic,
¶9 Noting the repeated encouragement by the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Security Council to refer the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic to the International Criminal Court,
1. Emphasizes the need to ensure accountability for crimes involving violations of international law, in particular of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, some of which may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011, through appropriate, fair and independent investigations and prosecutions at the domestic or international level, and stresses the need to pursue practical steps towards this goal to ensure justice for all victims and contribute to the prevention of future violations;
2. Stresses the need for any political process aimed at resolving the crisis in the Syrian Arab Republic to ensure credible and comprehensive accountability for the most serious crimes committed in the country to bring about reconciliation and sustainable peace;
3. Welcomes the efforts by States to investigate and prosecute crimes within their jurisdiction committed in the Syrian Arab Republic, in accordance with their national legislation and international law, and encourages other States to consider doing the same and to share relevant information to this end with other States;
4. Decides to establish an “International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of those Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011” under the auspices of the United Nations to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of such crimes and prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings in accordance with international standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes;
5. Requests the Secretary-General, in this regard, within 20 working days of the adoption of this resolution, to develop Terms of Reference of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism with the support of OHCHR, and requests further that the Secretary-General undertakes without delay the steps, measures and arrangements necessary for the speedy establishment and full functioning of the Impartial and Independent Mechanism, initially funded by voluntary contributions, in coordination with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic and building on existing capacities, including recruiting or allocating impartial and experienced staff with relevant skills and expertise in accordance with the Terms of Reference;
6. Calls upon all States, all parties to the conflict as well as civil society to cooperate fully with the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to effectively fulfill its mandate, and in particular to provide it with any information and documentation they may possess pertaining to the above-mentioned crimes as well as any other forms of assistance;
7. Requests the United Nations system as a whole to fully cooperate with the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism and to promptly respond to any request, including access to all information and documentation, and decides that the Mechanism closely cooperate with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic in all aspects of its work;
8. Requests the Secretary-General to report on the implementation of the present resolution within 45 days of its adoption and decides to revisit the question of funding of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism as soon as possible.
