ASP18 Side Event: ISIS Prosecutions: Putting Iraqi and Syrian Victims’ Rights First
Day 2 (3 December 2019)
Name of the Event: ISIS Prosecutions: Putting Iraqi and Syrian Victims’ Rights First (Side Event co-hosted by Impunity Watch, PAX, and the Violations Documentation Centre)
Overview by: Maj Grasten, Affiliated Expert PILPG-NL & Kelly van Eeten, Junior Research Associate PILPG-NL
Summary of Event:
This side event on the second day of the ASP meeting addressed the urgent need and possibilities for prosecuting members of ISIS. The panel consisted of Khalil Alhaj Saleh (a Syrian activist from Raqqa and leader of a Paris-based group of family members to disappeared people whose faith remain unknown), Basma Aldakhi (from the Yazidi community, now a peace mediator in northern Iraq with the NGO, PAX), and Mazen Darwich (a Syrian lawyer and activist, Executive Director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, and known for his work in bringing Syrian war criminals to account in European courts). The debate was chaired by Frances Topham Smallwood, MENA program officer at the NGO, Impunity Watch. In the period from 2017-2019, ISIS has been militarily defeated. Now the pressing question is how to hold ISIS accountable for its crimes. Where should trials be located? In Syria, Iraq or in the home countries of foreign fighters who joined ISIS? Each option poses a host of problems that set important limitations on the possibility for fair trials. European governments have raised the concern that prosecution would be problematic due to the absence of evidence. Where can standards of accountability then most effectively be met? What is the possibility of an international(ized) tribunal? The Netherlands has recently supported this option. Yet, its location and jurisdictional scope remain to be addressed.
Importantly, the panelists asserted that the needs and aspirations of victims are overlooked in these debates on justice and accountability. More than 8000 cases of people missing after being detained by ISIS have been documented by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. At the event today, concerns were raised that the search for truth, justice, and redress by victims in Syria and Iraq will be overlooked by powerful Western states preoccupied with their own self-interests and that a predominant focus on ISIS could conceal the responsibility and accountability of other parties to the conflict (“Daesh and ISIS are one player but not the only player”, it was emphasized during the event). “This climate of impunity allows further crimes to happen”, Frances Topham Smallwood affirmed. Khalil Alhaj Saleh emphasized that to prevent Syria from remaining “a paradise for impunity”, all perpetrators shall be prosecuted and held accountable. The faith of Khalil Alhaj Saleh’s brother remains unknown since he was abducted by ISIS members in July 2014. He stressed that his situation is not unique today in Syria. Speaking from immediate personal experiences, the three speakers called upon States Parties to the Rome Statute and the ICC to incorporate forced disappearance into any investigation against ISIS, incorporate it into international policy agendas, and assume both ethical and legal leadership and responsibility. Mazen Darwich emphasized that there is a legal possibility to prosecute ISIS fighters as several states where ISIS is present are already parties to the ICC. The crime of forced disappearance is a crime against humanity.