The British newspaper The Guardian published the findings of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), an international investigative commission made up of investigators and legal experts who formerly worked on war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and for the international criminal court (ICC).
A three-year operation to smuggle official documents out of Syria has produced enough evidence to indict Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior members of his regime, according to the CIJA.
The investigative commission worked with a team of 50 Syrian investigators who carried out the dangerous task of smuggling regime documents out of the country. So far one investigator has been killed, another severely wounded, and several have been detained and tortured by the regime.
The newspaper adds that the evidence has been collected and prosecution cases have been prepared in anticipation of a war crimes tribunal being established in the future.
Spokesman for the Syrian Coalition Salem al-Meslet calls for holding an urgent UN Security Council meeting to enforce the UN Resolution 2118 under Chapter VII and for the referral of war criminals to the International Criminal Court.
“The international community and members of the UN Security Council bear full responsibility of the catastrophic situation in Syria as they have so far failed to end the ongoing tragedy in Syria or to hold war criminals and perpetrators of genocidal crimes to account.” (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
