ZURICH: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan should be investigated and indicted for war crimes over his country’s military offensive in Syria, former prosecutor and UN investigator Carla del Ponte said in an interview published on Saturday.
Del Ponte, a former member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said Turkey’s intervention had broken international law and had reignited the conflict in Syria.
Ankara says its incursion — launched after US troops withdrew from the Syrian-Turkish border area — solely targeted the Kurdish YPG militia, which it regards as terrorists linked to Kurdish insurgents operating in southeast Turkey.
“For Erdogan to be able to invade Syrian territory to destroy the Kurds is unbelievable,” said del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.
“An investigation should be opened into him and he should be charged with war crimes. He should not be allowed to get away with this scot free,” she told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Wochenende in an interview.
Ankara halted its military offensive last week under a US-brokered cease-fire. Erdogan then negotiated an accord with Russian President Vladimir Putin whereby Syrian border guards and Russian military police began clearing the YPG from within 30 km (19 miles) of the Syrian-Turkish frontier.
From Tuesday Russian and Turkish forces will start to patrol a narrower, 10-km strip of land in northeast Syria where US troops had been deployed for years alongside their former Kurdish allies.
Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, have criticized its military incursion in northeast Syria, fearing it will undermine the fight against Daesh militants.
But del Ponte said European nations were reluctant to confront Turkey over its actions after Erdogan threatened to “open the gates” for refugees to head to Europe.
“Erdogan has the refugees as a bargaining chip,” she said.
Del Ponte joined the three-member Syria inquiry in September 2012, chronicling incidents such as chemical weapons attacks, a genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi population, siege tactics, and the bombing of aid convoys.
She quit in 2017, saying a lack of political backing from the UN Security Council made the job impossible.
Erdogan should be prosecuted over Syrian offensive: former UN investigator
Erdogan should be prosecuted over Syrian offensive: former UN investigator
- Former UN investigator Carla del Ponte: Turkey’s intervention had broken international law and had reignited the conflict in Syria
- Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, have criticized its military incursion in northeast Syria
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
