'As the son of a US officer, he lived for a time in southern Germany. As a 12-year-old in 1962, he visited the Dachau concentration camp with his family. "I could still smell the horror," he said. The experience stuck with him and ultimately motivated him to study law.''..shortly after the beginning of the Syrian civil war, established a kind of student public prosecutor's office. Together with their professors, students are preparing for the day when Assad's war crimes will hopefully be tried before an international court. They call it the
Syrian Accountability Project.
..
The database now consists of 17,000 pages of documentation. It is meant to scare the perpetrators, especially the members of the regime responsible for the ghastliest of horrors. By December 2015, the lawyers had registered 12,252 incidents, almost two thirds of which were clearly carried out by Assad's troops. But the commander of Islamic State (IS), members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other perpetrators are also listed. One of every five misdeeds perpetrated by the those fighting Assad, however, cannot be clearly attributed because neither the rebels nor the IS wear uniforms or insignia, but they are carried out by opposition groups.
"What's certain is that no party to the war is innocent," says Peter Levrant, the 29-year-old head of the project. When it comes to international law, it isn't so much the number of losses, the size of the damage or the death toll that matter -- it's about the fact that a war crime took place.
Levrant is currently holding the first versions of the indictments in his hands. The one for Bashar al-Assad is 20 pages long and includes "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes."
In the documents, the students meticulously detail how on March 15, 2011, the commander of Assad's Republican Guard in Damascus, Suheil Salman Hassan, gave the order to fire on unarmed demonstrators and how the commander in chief, President Assad, has been leading systematic attacks against civilian populations -- broken down by day, village, city and administrative district.
The authors dedicate a chapter to the at least 130,000 missing people, and the torture methods used by Assad's secret service. They range from the breaking of bones to burning people alive. The students are using the indictment against former Liberian President Taylor as a blueprint for the charges against Assad.
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Thus far, students Levrant and White have finished writing five indictments with their professor. Now they want to write indictments against commanders of IS, the Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army.
"We don't have a political agenda," says Levrant, the head of the project. "A crime is a crime and the law is the law." Even if it comes to an indictment, it would be impossible to punish all of the people responsible. But it would be possible to target the principals, the top commanders of fighting units that took part in war crimes.
Crane actually lives a rather placid life as a retiree in North Carolina. He walks in the vineyards and takes care of his grandchildren. Once a week he flies to Syracuse for two days. He studied here over 40 years ago, and it brings him happiness to teach the prosecutors of the future how to hunt down war criminals.
As the son of a US officer, he lived for a time in southern Germany. As a 12-year-old in 1962, he visited the Dachau concentration camp with his family. "I could still smell the horror," he said. The experience stuck with him and ultimately motivated him to study law.
At the time, Crane was proud of how the Americans defended freedom in Europe, but today, he often finds it difficult to be proud of his nation. He was about to leave the Defense Department when planning for the Iraq war was underway in 2002. He says it was "only for one reason, oil."
And then there's the Charles Taylor affair. As chief prosecutor, Crane wondered at the time why, despite his excellent relationship with US intelligence services, he wasn't receiving any support -- why, in fact, his investigations were even being hampered. As it turns out, Taylor had been working for the military intelligence agency DIA as well as for the CIA, and they wanted to continue the cooperation.
Crane is most ashamed of the fact that his country hasn't signed onto the Statute of the International Criminal Court and quotes former US President George W. Bush, who once said that if just one US soldier had to answer before the court, he would march into the Netherlands.
Crane thinks it's extraordinary that the biggest war criminals in the world -- the US, China and Russia -- have never been called to account because they take advantage of their veto in the UN Security Council.
Thus far, very few have taken note of the war-crimes matrix being prepared in Syracuse. Crane, however, has experience with the process.
The path to justice, he says, is long and full of setbacks, but it can happen. After all, he's managed it once before.'
- Der Spiegel,
Unimaginable Horrors: The War-Crimes Lawyer Hunting Syrian War Criminals, June 6, 2016
ContextThe Syrian Accountability ProjectBashar al-Assad’s crimes against humanity - '..Syrian officials should be tried for crimes against humanity.''..it's a simple reality that the Assad regime has indirectly aided the growth of IS..'