DAMASCUS: Syria’s militant leader on Tuesday vowed to pursue former senior government officials responsible for torture and war crimes, a day after he began talks on the transfer of power following president Bashar Assad’s ouster.
Assad fled Syria as the opposition alliance swept into the capital Damascus, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes, millions of them finding refuge abroad.
“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” militant leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, said Tuesday in a statement on Telegram.
“We will offer rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes,” he said, adding the incoming authorities would seek the return of officials who have fled abroad.
Sharaa held talks on Monday with outgoing prime minister Mohammed Al-Jalali “to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services” to Syria’s people, according to an earlier statement on Telegram.

While Syria had been at war for over 13 years, the government’s collapse came in a matter of days in a lightning offensive led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
Even as some Syrians rejoiced and others rushed to search for loved ones in Assad’s notorious jails, Israel continued to carry out air strikes aimed at destroying the former government’s military capabilities, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Early Tuesday, AFP journalists heard more loud explosions in Damascus.

Access to Syria ‘crime scene’ a ‘game-changer’

UN investigators who for years have been gathering evidence of horrific crimes committed in Syria hope Bashar Assad’s downfall will finally mean they can access “the crime scene” and “massive evidence.”
“There is a sea change,” said Robert Petit, a Canadian prosecutor and legal scholar who heads the United Nations investigative body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) on Syria.
“The evidence in Syria is finally becoming available,” he told AFP in an interview, a day after Assad fled Syria as militants swept into the capital, bringing to a spectacular end five decades of brutal rule by his clan over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century.
“It’s already quite clear that there’s massive evidence,” he said, pointing to the videos emerging from Syria’s emptying prisons showing “rooms full of reams and reams of paper.”
“There will be massive amount of information available.”