Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Damasus, SANA- A delegation from The Commission for International Justice and Accountability(CIJA), visited the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) and met with a number of its staff, and gave a presentation on the commission’s most prominent tasks, statistics, and documentation of crimes and violations perpetrated by the Assad ousted regime over the past years.
During the meeting, Dr. William Wiley, Chairman of the Commission for International Justice (CIJA), said that work to document and uncovers the crimes of the former regime began in 2011, with a team that was trained and raised awareness of exactly what it needed to do to unveil those crimes. This team, in turn, worked to employ other people based on standards of ethics, trust, and safety.
Mr. Wiley pointed out that the prevailing idea at the time was that the regime would collapse within a year at most, and then it would be tried based on the large base of evidence that had been collected.
However, Wily add, the plan later changed for the trial of the regime figures in the countries in which they were located, after it was able to survive due to the support it received from its allies.
Mr. Wiley considered the trials to be held in Syria for war criminals to represent a moral victory for the victims and their families, stressing that they must adhere to international standards, with a focus on individuals linked to intelligence agencies and security branches.
For his part, Ambassador Stephen Rapp, Member of the board of directors, and a prosecutor, pointed out that it is easy to say that there are tens of thousands of people buried in mass graves, but the difficult task lies in revealing the figures who carried out the mass killings and the leaders who gave them the orders.
Raab expressed the Commission ‘s desire to cooperate with the new Syrian authorities to provide the necessary skills to work on millions of documents, with the aim of prosecuting the vast majority of perpetrators of crimes, noting that these documents will be relied upon in trials that will be conducted outside Syria.
The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to furthering criminal justice efforts through investigations, in order to prevent the loss and destruction of vital evidence for the purpose of supporting prosecutorial efforts to end impunity, whether at the domestic or international level.
Noura /Khadega/ Mazen Eyon
