Road to postwar justice in Syria will be long but worthwhile, rights lawyer says

On one of the many occasions human rights lawyer Radeef Mustafa was detained by Syria's former regime, security agents in Damascus shoved him into the boot of a Peugeot car.

“They squeezed me on top of three other people,” said Mr Mustafa, 58. “I was wearing a suit, and I jokingly told the man below me that he was ruining my tie.”

The incident took place at a sit-in two decades ago, well before the 2011 revolt against the former Assad regime, when Mr Mustafa was one of a handful of people in the country who dared publicly champion human rights.

Times have changed. In May this year, President Ahmad Al Shara appointed Mr Mustafa to a newly created body tasked with upgrading the legal system to deal with the rights abuses committed under Assad family rule.

The 13-member National Commission for Transitional Justice has a mandate to uncover and address violations committed from 1970, when Hafez Al Assad became president, until the removal of his son and successor, Bashar Al Assad, in December 2024, after 13 years of civil war.

The commission’s work will focus on the most egregious violations during the civil war and the crackdown on the peaceful protest movement that preceded it.

“We owe it to the victims. These criminals plunged Syria into the dark ages,” says Mr Mustafa, speaking to The National at the Havana Cafe in central Damascus, where Hafez Al Assad plotted the 1970 coup that ushered in dynastic rule.

The way the new system holds former regime members accountable will determine the course of politics and the rule of law in Syria, and help to deal with the scars of the civil war, he says. Special courts will be set up to handle the worst cases, but those put on trial will have rights comparable to the rights granted to the accused in developed democracies, Mr Mustafa says.

An open process that “arrives at the truth”, results in compensation for the victims, and keeps alive the memory of those who perished, will help curb revenge killings. It could also contribute to a five-year transition to pluralism, to which the new authorities have committed. “The objective is justice, not vengeance,” he says.

When the pro-democracy protest movement began in March 2011, the lawyer and his four children became a fixture of street demonstrations in his Kurdish hometown of Ain Al Arab in rural Aleppo. At one protest, a security officer cracked open the skull of his middle son with a baton, and a pro-regime militiaman told him to take his family and leave, or he would be “eliminated”.

The toppling of Mr Al Assad ended 13 years in exile in Turkey for Mr Mustafa. He returned days after the regime fell, eager to build the “new Syria”, and prevent a repeat of the abuses under the old regime. However, thousands have perished since then in revenge killings of members of the old regime, and in sectarian killings during government offensives to subdue areas inhabited by members of Syria's Alawite minority, to which Mr Al Assad belongs, as well as the Druze, a smaller sect.

Underpinning the revamped legal system will be a transitional justice law dealing with violations under the old regime, mainly war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and forced disappearances. The commission is putting the final touches to the draft legislation, which will be reviewed by a new parliament, due to convene soon, Mr Mustafa says.

The current legal code, which has been carried over from the former regime largely unchanged, is not equipped to deal with massive and systematic transgressions, says Mr Mustafa. He points out that the new law will have a command responsibility clause, which means that superiors, including Mr Al Assad, can be held accountable for crimes they knew had occurred on their watch, even though they themselves were not directly involved.

Some of the violators might escape justice, just like some Nazis did, Mr Mustafa says. However, the transitional justice law will help to assure Syrians that the crimes of the former regime “were so gross and cannot be allowed to be repeated, although they have become part of the history of the country”.

Forces loyal to the former regime summarily executed and disappeared thousands of civilians, while thousands died under torture. The army used barrel bombs, ballistic missiles, and chemical weapons to subdue rebel areas. Almost every party in the civil war committed violations, but rarely on the scale that was carried out by the regime and its allies, who had superior firepower. Mr Mutafa says all victims of the conflict deserve justice, although the work of his commission mainly concerns prosecuting the former regime.

In the past several months, the authorities have captured hundreds of officials and security operatives of the Assad regime, but not the top echelons, most of whom are in Russia. Mr Al Assad and his top lieutenants fled to Moscow when Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a group formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda and led by Mr Al Shara, was on the cusp of capturing Damascus.

Mr Al Shara ordered HTS and all other insurgent groups to dissolve before becoming president in January. He told CBS before a trip to Moscow on Wednesday that Syria would use “all legal means possible to demand that Bashar Al Assad be brought to justice”.

Last month, a judge in Damascus issued an arrest warrant for the former president related to the crackdown on the protesters in Deraa province, the cradle of the Syrian revolt. Mr Mustafa would not be drawn on the merits of the warrant, nor whether there have been diplomatic efforts to try to convince Russia to hand over Mr Al Assad.

However, the chances of the former dictator and his lieutenants facing justice in Syria would be increased if they were prosecuted under the new law, because it specifically deals with the enormity of their alleged crimes, he says. If charged with war crimes, Mr Al Assad would not have immunity as a former president, and his name could be placed on the Interpol list.

“The trials will need time and lots of resources to conform to international standards,” Mr Mustafa says. A robust process will be “crucial” to undercut any tendency for summary justice, and the corruption that marred the legal system under the former regime.