Legal
experts say president himself must have been aware of systematic killing and
torture
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UN observers at a morgue holding victims of the Houla massacre.
Photograph: Shaam News/AFP/Getty Images
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New evidence
has emerged that members of Bashar al-Assad's family and inner circle are
directly ordering the commission of crimes against humanity in Syria. Experts
in international law consider it "preposterous and completely
implausible" that the president himself would be unaware of the systematic
and widespread killing and torture.
Defectors
from Syrian intelligence and security agencies, used by the regime to crush the
revolt, claim that Assad's cousin issued shoot-to-kill orders against civilian
protesters in Dera'a, the cradle of the insurrection. Kill quotas were
reportedly issued to snipers tasked with assassinating pro-democracy activists.
They allege
that Assad's brother Maher, a senior army commander, was among senior figures
operating out of a secret command centre in Dera'a when orders were issued to
contain a protest march by all means necessary. More than 100 civilians were
shot dead. In addition, Maher is accused of ordering the indiscriminate mass
punishment of the entire male population of a troublesome town, al-Moudamya,
last year.
The
defectors' testimony, to be broadcast by Channel 4 Dispatches on Monday night,
has added resonance after a weekend when arguably the ugliest atrocity of the
15-month confrontation was perpetrated at Houla. Though the regime blamed
rebels, western powers are adamant that regime tanks were responsible.
In the
documentary, The Real Mr & Mrs Assad, there is footage not seen before in
the UK of the president saying: "Every mistake [that] happens in this
government, you are responsible, not somebody else. Not the minister. Not the
prime minister. At the end you should be responsible." In more recent
months, Assad has repeatedly denied any role in the killings.
"No
one is authorised to give orders to the security forces except for him,"
said the exiled former Syrian vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam, who fell out
with Assad in 2005, having served under him and his father. Speaking in Paris,
where he lives, Khaddam said: "Will anyone believe that 300,000 soldiers
can come out of their barracks to slaughter citizens due to an initiative by
their officers? These orders are issued by the president of the state."
The
eyewitness accounts follows the publication by the Guardian in March of emails
downloaded by activists from the private accounts of Assad and his London-born
wife, Asma. The emails revealed that the president was kept personally informed
about military deployments in the city of Homs, where an estimated 4,000 died
during weeks of relentless bombardment.
The
Dispatches documentary further examines emails from the same cache which
indicate that the Assads were aware of the arrest of individuals as part of the
crackdown. In two separate cases, they appear to have personally intervened to
secure the release of detainees.
One email,
dating from mid-December last year, was sent to both Bashar and Asma al-Assad
by her father, the London-based cardiologist Fawaz Akhras. It drew their
attention to a Channel 4 documentary, Syria's Torture Machine, which was about
to be aired. He suggested that the Syrian government respond to the allegations
that state-sanctioned torture was systematic and widespread.
The Syrian
embassy in London did respond, before the programme was broadcast, using an
almost identical form of words to those suggested by Akhras in his email.The
defectors also detail allegations against Brigadier-General Atef Najib, Assad's
cousin, who headed the political security directorate in Dera'a at the start of
the uprising. Two defectors claim to have received direct orders from Najib to
fire live ammunition at demonstrators.
One of
them, Amar Sheikh, formerly of central security in Damascus – who was drafted
in to Dera'a – described Najib telling a briefing which he attended: "You
who are armed, you are required if you see that the situation is getting out of
control to shoot the demonstrators with bullets."
The bloody
crackdown in Dera'a caused national outrage and was raised in parliament by a
clearly angry Dera'a MP – after which Najib was transferred.
"Clearly
this decision was made very high up," said Anna Neistat of Human Rights
Watch, an expert in the command structure of the Syrian armed forces. "He
is the president's cousin. I think there was clearly awareness that something
he did was bad enough that it could lead to a major revolt."
Another defector,
Afaq Ahmed, a former member of the special operations directorate of the feared
air force intelligence branch, claims that a later killing spree, in which 100
protesters were shot dead, was approved by the head of air force intelligence.
He was allegedly based in a secret command centre in the Kuwait hotel on the
city's eastern outskirts.
It is
understood that Maher al-Assad was one of the members of his brother's inner
circle decamped to Dera'a and had based in this command centre. The European Union
describes Maher as "the principal overseer of violence against
demonstrators."
Ahmed, who
is in a secure location in a neighbouring country, said: "Our task was
restricted to assassinating activists and protesters based on orders and the
permitted killing quota authorised by the authorities. The quota varied. Some
days it was 10; others, 15 or 20."
This
accords with evidence gathered by Neistat. "There does appear to be a
policy on how to crack down on the protests," she said. "We
interviewed one of the snipers … and he said that before the protest they were
given a specific percentage – essentially a quota – on how many people, in
relation to the overall number of protesters in the streets, they were allowed
to take down."
As yet,
there is no smoking gun linking Assad directly to the commission of crimes. But
William Schabas, a professor of international criminal law, said that even
without "a signature on direct orders" he believes there is now
sufficient evidence to hold the president to account, using the doctrine of
command responsibility.
"We
can hold him responsible," Schabus says, "even if we can't prove that
he actually ordered the crimes. Whether he is a micro-manager of atrocity, or
whether he's a macro-manager, it doesn't actually make much difference.
"Hitler
was a macro-manager. There is very little evidence of Hitler ordering direct
atrocities to be perpetrated. Does anyone have any doubt that Hitler wasn't in
charge? I don't think so. And I think that this is a similar case."
Last month,
the former US Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell, said Assad could be put
on trial in the same way as Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia,
who was found to have "aided and abetted" war crimes by a UN-backed tribunal
in The Hague.
Any future
prosecution of Assad on charges of crimes against humanity must be unanimously
referred by the United Nations security council to the International Criminal
Court – as happened in the case of Libya last year. At present, this is
considered unlikely, owing to the likelihood of a Russian and Chinese veto. But
the British government, among others, is assisting in the gathering of evidence
which could one day be used in court.
"We
will do everything within our power," says the Foreign Office minister
Alistair Burt. "We have seen former leaders of regimes in the ICC already,
so no one can discount the possibility that it may well happen and if you were
Bashar al-Assad, you would not bet that it would not happen to you."
