UN rapporteurs call for preserving evidence of crimes committed under Bashar al-Assad regime

UN rapporteurs called on Monday to preserve evidence of gross human rights violations and crimes committed under Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.

“Documenting and preserving evidence of gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed during years of conflict and authoritarianism is crucial to ensuring accountability,” the rapporteurs said in a joint statement. “All concerned must prevent the loss of vital information that contributes to the search for missing persons,” the statement added. The statement also stressed that the United Nations and all international actors must work together to ensure accountability in Syria.

On December 8, Syrian factions took control of Damascus and other cities before that, with the withdrawal of regime forces from public institutions and streets, ending 61 years of Baath Party rule and 53 years of Assad family rule. Bashar ruled Syria for 24 years since July 17, 2000, succeeding his father Hafez al-Assad (1971-2000). He and his family secretly left the country to his ally Russia, which announced that it would grant them asylum for what it considered "humanitarian reasons." The day after his ouster, the leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced that Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of the government that had been running Idlib for years, had been tasked with forming a new Syrian government to manage the transitional phase.

Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution against the Bashar al-Assad regime in 2011, successive US administrations have imposed sanctions on this regime, starting with the first months of the revolution, when the administration of former President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on the security services, froze all Syrian government assets, and banned exports to Syria and imports of oil from it.

During the years of the revolution, Washington also blacklisted many of the regime’s pillars, and in 2017 imposed sanctions on 18 military and political officials in the Syrian regime, following investigations conducted in 2016 by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which confirmed the regime’s use of chemical weapons in 2014 and 2015.

Between 2011 and 2024, the European Union imposed numerous sanctions on the Assad regime, and on companies and entities cooperating with and associated with it. In 2021, the UK transferred the EU sanctions against the Assad regime and its associates to the UK’s separate sanctions regime for Syria, according to a statement issued at the time by the British Foreign Office, which said that “our sanctions aim to end the brutal repression of civilians by the Assad regime, and increase pressure on it to achieve a lasting political solution for all Syrians.”

But according to what experts previously confirmed to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the structure of the regime was not affected by Western sanctions. Rather, the siege increased the wealth of its pillars over the past years, and the ordinary Syrian citizen was the one who suffered from these sanctions. As for the regime and its security apparatus, they were not affected by them at all.

(Anatolia, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed)