GENEVA: Justice will catch up with Syrian President Bashar Assad even if he remains in power under a negotiated end to Syria’s war, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte said on Monday.
“Assad is the president, so let’s deal with the institution of president. If we can achieve a cease-fire with the president, why not? But afterwards, justice will come,” del Ponte said.
“You remember in former Yugoslavia, Milosevic was president, and it was a peace negotiation at Dayton and they achieved an agreement? And Milosevic was still president, but justice could be done. Just an example from the past.”
Del Ponte was chief prosecutor for the international court which put former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic on trial in 2002, seven years after he signed a peace treaty to end the war in the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic died in his cell in 2006, before his trial was concluded.
This month European countries and the United States have moved away from demanding Assad’s immediate ouster, saying instead that the timing of his exit could be part of a negotiated peace deal.
Asked if she thought justice would catch up with Assad, Del Ponte said: “Yes. It must be done.”
Del Ponte is a member of the UN independent commission of inquiry that has been investigating human rights abuses in Syria for four years.
The immediate priority was to end the war, Del Ponte said, but she hoped an ad hoc tribunal like the courts set up to try crimes committed in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda could also be established for Syria.
The court would need to be established by the UN Security Council, which means it would run the risk of being blocked by China or Russia, two permanent members of the Security Council that have frequently vetoed UN resolutions critical of Assad.
Del Ponte said the refugees who had entered Europe would “accelerate the solution” because European states were confronted with a problem that they need to solve immediately. “It is a great pressure because of the cost, the expense. Politically it’s important. So I hope. Welcome refugees, welcome to Europe.”
Milosevic’s fate ‘awaits Syria tyrant’
Milosevic’s fate ‘awaits Syria tyrant’
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
