A year after the dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled, Syrians are still waiting to see any concrete form of transitional justice.
The new government and its much-depleted judicial system face a gargantuan task, to address hundreds of thousands of crimes committed by the former regime. And, already, there are accusations of violations by fighters affiliated with the new government to add to the challenge. Both need to be reckoned with.
Finally, that effort may be coming closer. This month, 14 men charged with crimes committed during sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal region in March went on trial in a civilian court in the city of Aleppo. Syrian journalists present at the trial reported that some of the defendants were former regime soldiers, and half were combatants who fought on the side of the new government. Most of the men denied the charges.
The hearing was welcomed by human rights campaigners as a step needed to end impunity in the country. Yet it has bewildered some Syrians who are demanding justice for the years of abuse under the Assad regime.
“This is the big question that Syrians are asking: Why haven’t the crimes the regime committed over the past 14 years been investigated,” one of Syria’s leading judges, Jomaa Aldbis Alanzi, said in an interview this year with The New York Times.
“But those violations happened under a dictatorial regime,” he said, “while the coastal events happened under the new government, which came to build a state of law — that’s why we called for this authority to be formed.” The authority he referred to is the National Committee for Investigation and Fact-Finding, a body appointed by the government to find those responsible for the sectarian violence on the coast in March.
This past summer, Judge Alanzi completed a four-month investigation as head of that committee.
The 14 men who appeared in civil court this month were charged with crimes including inciting discord and civil war, murder, looting, secession and belonging to armed gangs, according to SANA, the state news agency.
The violence on the coast was the first of several episodes of sectarian strife since the new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, took power.
The fact-finding committee reported that more than 1,400 people had been killed in the violence, most of them from the Alawite minority to which the former president, Mr. al-Assad, belongs.
“It identified 298 individuals, including members of pro-government military factions, suspected of committing violations against civilians, and 265 supporters of the former regime, Judge Alanzi said.
The committee passed their names to the police for further investigation, and some had already been detained at the time of the events, he said.
“There are more still to be identified,” the judge said. “The matter is now in the government’s hands.”
Nabih Nabhan, a human-rights activist in the coastal town of Tartus, criticized Judge Alanzi’s report, accusing it of playing down the number killed and absolving the government of responsibility.
“You cannot be independent if you are defending an authority that is accused of a crime,” he said in a recent interview.
But other activists defended the committee’s work as a sincere effort and the first of its kind in Syria after decades of abuses.
The government appointed the committee but declared it would work independently. Judge Alanzi said that on the several occasions when he met with the president, Mr. al-Sharaa had expressed his determination to hold people accountable for crimes committed.
“The truth is your responsibility, and accountability is mine,” he quoted the president as saying.
The judge said, “We trust that the government will carry out prosecutions to ensure we do not return to the cycle of violence.”
Judge Alanzi, 55, once served as public prosecutor in the eastern city of Raqqa. But he quit his post in 2012 rather than take part in the regime’s suppression of protesters during the Arab Spring uprising.
The fact-finding assignment in his new job turned into a grueling, risk-filled ordeal that the judge described as the hardest of his life.
Much of the coastal area was still an active combat zone and the committee members were provided with a security escort, but the judge said the committee had been able to work without interference. Mr. al-Sharaa was among those interviewed and did not see the report until it was completed, the judge said.
The panel interviewed more than 900 people, he said, including combatants, victims’ families and survivors. Some who had taken refuge in the Russian military base in the Latakia governorate were persuaded to come out to be interviewed and then were allowed to return to the base.
The committee also hired seven female clerks from the Alawite community, from which many of the civilian victims belonged, to help gather testimonies, Judge Alanzi said.
He concluded that the killings were not organized and that the government had not directed its forces to commit violations, but that the government did not have control over all of the factions operating under its aegis.
A report by the United Nations Office of Human Rights released Aug. 14 quoted his findings but described the killings as widespread and systemic and called for an expanded investigation.
Judge Alanzi said the culprits included members of armed factions from both sides, as well as petty criminals and likely members of extremist groups.
He said the new government had been ill-prepared to control the situation in the coastal region when its forces came under attack.
The government was still not able to bring security in most of Syria, he said, calling for it to take stronger action.
“There must be a focus on criminalizing sectarianism and combating sectarian discourse,” Judge Alanzi said, “whether with old laws or by enacting new ones.”
Mr. al-Sharaa has promised to act on the conclusions of the fact-finding committee and hold accountable those guilty of crimes on all sides.
“I guarantee to bring to justice everyone accountable and responsible for bloodshed,” he told the U.N. General Assembly in September.
Carlotta Gall is a senior correspondent, covering the war in Ukraine.
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