Syria Justice and Accountability Centre

Last updated
Syria Justice and Accountability Centre
AbbreviationSJAC
FormationApril 2012
501c3 Non-Profit
HeadquartersWashington, DC
Location
  • United States
Executive Director
Mohammad Al-Abdallah
Website https://syriaaccountability.org/
Director Mohammad Al-Abdallah in an educational session about witness protection SJAC Witness protection session.jpg
Director Mohammad Al-Abdallah in an educational session about witness protection

The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) is a non-profit justice and legal documentation organization that monitors and reports on violations by various actors in the Syrian Conflict. Its documentation includes data on the Syrian government, opposition forces, ISIS, and foreign actors. [1] [2] The organization was started by the group Friends of the Syrian People in 2012, who had a stated goal of preserving documentation and creating a centralized source for data collection. SJAC primarily works on issues related to transitional justice, [3] criminal accountability, and human rights violations in Syria.

Contents

SJAC is a Washington D.C.–based organization that has staff and analysts in Europe and the United States. It also has documenters who collect witness statements about crimes against humanity in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. SJAC often collaborates with researchers and human rights and justice–based organizations in the European Union and Syria. [4] [5]

Current Documentation Mechanisms

Trial Reporting

SJAC's legal team in Germany monitors and reports on trials of those accused of committing war crimes in Syria. [6] Two ongoing trial monitoring cases conducted by SJAC are that of Anwar Raslan [7] and Alaa M., a German doctor accused of committing crimes against humanity while employed by the Syrian Government. [8] SJAC previously monitored the German trial of Eyad Al-Gharib [9] who was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for his role in knowingly transporting detainees to detention sites where they would face systematic torture and abuse. [10]

Missing Persons Cases

SJAC works with several teams of responders in Syria which exhume and investigate mass graves and document information about missing persons in Syria. SJAC works with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to provide training in Syria on how to accurately exhume, examine, and document mass graves and human remains. [11]

Documentation Training

SJAC provides training in Arabic, both in person and virtually to those working to recover remains and discover missing persons in Syria. [12] Training material provided by SJAC includes videos, fact sheets, and quizzes which are meant to prepare individuals to collect evidence of crimes and forced disappearances.

Government Document Preservation

SJAC preserved 5,003 government documents found in former Syrian Government intelligence offices. The documents survived bombing during the conflict in Raqqa and Homs and were later smuggled by activists from Syria to Turkey. The documents detail instances where government officials had tortured and spied on Syrians in the lead-up to the Syrian Conflict. Later documents include evidence of broad authorization by the government to allow security forces to use force against peaceful protests and uprisings during the 2011 Arab Spring. [13]

In an interview with France24, SJAC claimed that it had identified a number of documents which could later be used for criminal prosecution of government officials who had engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity. [14] Further analysis by outside organizations will be necessary to determine if and how prosecution of former official would be possible under current international law.

Analysis

SJAC publishes articles, blogs, and reports that pertain to transitional justice, human rights abuses, war crimes, international law, refugee issues, and the international community's response to the Syrian conflict. Recent blogs and publications center around current events, challenges faced by refugees, and trial monitoring of Syrian individuals charged with crimes against humanity.

In January, 2021 the organization filed a communication with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asking for an investigation into crimes committed against Syrian refugees who were attempting to cross the border into Greece. The communication was lodged in response to accusations that the European Coast Guard (Frontex), had damaged migrant boats and endangered lives by pushing boats away from Greek territorial waters. The case is currently being reviewed by the ICC which will determine whether to conduct a larger investigation. [15]

Bayanat

Bayanat is a relational database software created by SJAC that sorts and organizes large sets of open-source digital data. [16] It was developed in 2014 and contains over 1.8 million pieces of data that primarily document human rights violations in Syria by perpetrators on both sides of the conflict. The database was first made public on GitHub in December 2020. [17] SJAC shares this data with the International Impartial Independent Mechanism as well as other justice mechanisms that utilize documentation of violations perpetrated during the Syrian Conflict.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crimes against humanity</span> Concept in international law

Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a US-based not-for-profit human rights NGO that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world. PHR headquarters are in New York City, with offices in Boston, Washington, D.C., as well as Nairobi. It was established in 1986 to use the unique skills and credibility of health professionals to advocate for persecuted health workers, prevent torture, document mass atrocities, and hold those who violate human rights accountable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul R. Williams (professor of law)</span>

Paul R. Williams is a professor at American University, where he teaches in the School of International Service and the Washington College of Law, holding the Rebecca Grazier Professorship in Law and International Relations. He is the president and co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) which provides pro bono assistance to countries and governments involved in peace negotiations, drafting post-conflict constitutions, and prosecuting war criminals, and was consultant at the London based Bosnian Institute for years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International criminal law</span> Public international law

International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human rights in Syria</span>

Human rights in Syria are effectively non-existent. The country's human rights record is considered one of the worst in the world. As a result, Syria has been globally condemned by prominent international organizations, including the United Nations, Human rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Union. Civil liberties, political rights, freedom of speech and assembly are severely restricted under the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad, which is regarded as "one of the world's most repressive regimes". The 50th edition of Freedom in the World, the annual report published by Freedom House since 1973, designates Syria as "Worst of the Worst" among the "Not Free" countries. The report lists Syria as one of the two countries to get the lowest possible score (1/100).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Rapp</span> American politician

Stephen J. Rapp is an American lawyer and the former United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Ball</span> American software programmer

Patrick Ball is a scientist who has spent thirty years conducting quantitative analysis for truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, international criminal tribunals, and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Chad, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Kosovo, Liberia, Peru, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Syria. As director of research at Human Rights Data Analysis Group, he assists human rights defenders by conducting scientific and statistical analysis of large-scale human rights abuses. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Columbia University, and his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) is a US non-profit international human rights organization based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1998, CJA represents survivors of torture and other grave human rights abuses in cases against individual rights violators before U.S. and Spanish courts. CJA has pioneered the use of civil litigation in the United States as a means of redress for survivors from around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human Rights Data Analysis Group</span> US non-profit organization

The Human Rights Data Analysis Group is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that applies rigorous science to the analysis of human rights violations around the world. It was founded in 1991 by Patrick Ball. The organization has published findings on conflicts in Syria, Colombia, Chad, Kosovo, Guatemala, Peru, East Timor, India, Liberia, Bangladesh, and Sierra Leone. The organization provided testimony in the war crimes trials of Slobodan Milošević and Milan Milutinović at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and in Guatemala's Supreme Court in the trial of General José Efraín Ríos Montt, the de facto president of Guatemala in 1982–1983. Gen. Ríos was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. Most recently, the organization has published on police violence in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Syrian civil war</span> Multi-sided war in Syria (2011–present)

The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by the government's security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the crisis had escalated into a full-blown civil war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights</span> Non-profit human rights organization

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">War crimes in the Syrian civil war</span>

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The Violations Documentation Center in Syria is a network of Syrian opposition activists whose aim is to document human rights violations perpetrated since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, including victims of the violence, detainees, and missing people. The organization works with the activists from the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, and documents identified victims of the violence from the rebels and the civilians. The stated purpose of the organization is to provide an independent documentation of human rights violations within Syria, a resource that may help any future justice-related procedures. The center's main sources of information include medical records, families of the victims and information received from the Imam of the mosque that performed the burial.

The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government.

International and national courts outside Syria have begun the prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals. War crimes perpetrated by the Syrian government or rebel groups include extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture and imprisonment. "[A]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights is central to achieving and maintaining durable peace in Syria", stated UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo.

Anwar Raslan is a Syrian former colonel who led a unit within Syria's General Intelligence Directorate. In January 2022, a German Higher Regional Court convicted him of crimes against humanity under universal jurisdiction. The specific charges against him were 4,000 counts of torture, 58 counts of murder, rape, and sexual coercion. His trial marked the first international war crimes case against a member of the Syrian government during the presidency of Bashar al-Assad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EHRC–OHCHR Tigray investigation</span>

The EHRC–OHCHR Tigray investigation is a human rights investigation launched jointly by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in mid-2021 into human rights violations of the Tigray War that started in November 2020. The EHRC–OHCHR joint investigation team's report was published on 3 November 2021.

Balkees Jarrah is a lawyer who serves as associate director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.

References

  1. ↑ "Syrian Justice and Accountability Center". Peace Insight. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  2. ↑ "Thousands of smuggled documents expose Syria's shady security agencies". France 24. 2019-05-21. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  3. ↑ "Syrians Still Hoping for Justice and Accountability for Abuses". United States Institute of Peace. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  4. ↑ Wise, Jamie (May 2020). Transitional Justice Preferences Among Syrians: A Qualitative Exploration (Thesis thesis). The Ohio State University. hdl:1811/91723.
  5. ↑ "Syria Situation of returnees from abroad". Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 8. June 2021.
  6. ↑ "TIMEP Joins Court Motion on Historic Syria Trial in Koblenz". TIMEP. July 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
  7. ↑ "'My goal is justice for all Syrians': one man's journey from jail to witness for the prosecution". The Guardian. 2020-12-12. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
  8. ↑ Schuetze, Christopher F.; Hubbard, Ben (2020-06-22). "Syrian Doctor Accused of Torture Is Arrested in Germany". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-07-12.
  9. ↑ "Syrian regime officials on trial in Koblenz, Germany - Branch 251". branch-251.captivate.fm. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  10. ↑ Claudia Otto, Tamara Qiblawi and Stephanie Halasz (24 February 2021). "In world first, Germany convicts Syrian regime officer of crimes against humanity". CNN. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  11. ↑ "The Search For Truth". Searching for Truth After ISIS. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
  12. ↑ Leyh, Brianne McGonigle (2017-04-12). "Changing Landscapes in Documentation Efforts: Civil Society Documentation of Serious Human Rights Violations". Utrecht Journal of International and European Law. 33 (84): 44–58. doi: 10.5334/ujiel.365 . ISSN   2053-5341.
  13. ↑ "Thousands of smuggled documents expose Syria's shady security agencies". France 24. 2019-05-21. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  14. ↑ "Thousands of smuggled documents expose Syria's shady security agencies". France 24. 2019-05-21. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  15. ↑ "Syrian rights group asks for probe into mistreatment of refugees by Greece". InfoMigrants. 2021-01-29. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  16. ↑ "Bayanat". Bayanat. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
  17. ↑ "GitHub - sjacorg/bayanat: Open source data management solution for human rights documentation". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-07-28.
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