To Achieve Peace, Syria Must Punish All Crimes: Rights Lawyer
Lasting peace in Syria depends on the country building a strong judicial system giving justice to the victims of all crimes committed during the Assad era, a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer told AFP.
"We believe that the Syrians who paid the heavy cost to reach this moment will not accept changing one dictatorship into another," Mazen Darwish said in an interview.
Darwish, who was in Stockholm with his wife Yara Bader to receive an award for their work running the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), is one of the most high-profile rights advocates for Syria.
While acknowledging that progress "will take time", Darwish said: "We don't think that we will be able to reach sustainable peace in Syria if we don't solve all of these crimes."
Syria's international ties have started to reboot under its new transitional rulers, an Islamist coalition led by Ahmed al-Sharaa who commanded a rebel offensive which in December ended five decades of rule by the Assad family.
But Western powers in particular have urged the new leadership to respect freedoms and protect minorities -- and wariness lingers over the future directions the coalition might take.
President Donald Trump this week announced the lifting of US sanctions on Syria, which the Syrian foreign ministry hailed as a "pivotal turning point".
But Darwish, who was born in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, said there are "a lot of challenges, a lot of worries regarding the new authorities".
Sharaa's administration has vowed to prosecute those responsible for the torture of tens of thousands of detainees held in Syrian prisons under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad, and under his father Hafez al-Assad.
Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia, is also accused of using chemical weapons against Syria's population.
"We hope we will have transitional justice roadmap in Syria," Darwish said.
He stressed that the new legal system should examine crimes from all parties and groups in the country.
But the goal of bringing in transitional justice to Syria has had a setback.
In late February, Syrian rights groups denounced the banning of a conference on transitional justice in the country to be attended by international NGOs and representatives of foreign governments.
That conference, aiming to establish rule of law with an eye to national reconciliation, was to examine the fate of those who disappeared and violations committed during the civil war.
With Syria's own justice system still deficient and lacking trust, the SCM has turned to outside countries that have adopted universal jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, among them France, Germany, Canada and the United States.
On Thursday, Darwish was due to testify in Paris as a civil party in a trial of former Syrian rebel, Majdi Nema, accused of complicity in war crimes in Syria.
The former member of Jaysh al-Islam, whose trial started in late April, denies the allegations.
"For us, this is one of the most important cases. This is also a case where the victims are our colleagues," Darwish explained.
Human rights advocates Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamada, Samira Khalil, and Nazem Hammadi went missing after being abducted on December 9, 2013, in their offices in Douma.
The region was under the control of rebel groups at the time, including Jaysh al-Islam.
Stemming from the work done by SCM and other organisations, French judges have also issued two arrest warrants targeting Bashar al-Assad.
The work carried out by Darwish and his wife Bader has come at a cost: the lawyer was himself arrested in 2012 and tortured in Syrian prisons. A prison complex in the Syrian city of Palmyra that had been run by the ousted Assad regime AFP Darwish and other Syrian rights advocates have turned to outside countries' courts for justice AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
DW
5 hours ago
- DW
Middle East: Gaza aid centers temporarily close – DW – 06/04/2025
06/04/2025 June 4, 2025 Spain cancels purchase of Israeli anti-tank missiles, media report A contract to buy 168 firing posts and 1,680 anti-tank missiles from Israeli defense company Rafael has been cancelled by Spain, national media reportered. The daily newspaper El Pais, citing unnamed government sources, reported that the deal was valued at €287.5 million ($327 million). The equipment was to be manufactured in Spain under license from Rafael. Sources from the Spanish Ministry of Defense told AFP news agency that the government has begun revoking licenses of Israeli origin and redirecting its procurement programs to achieve "greater technological independence and autonomy." In late April, Spain canceled a contract to purchase bullets from another Israeli company, IMI Systems. Spain strongly criticizes Israel's military operation in Gaza. Last year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez officially recognized a Palestinian state, drawing criticism from Israel.
DW
9 hours ago
- DW
Fact check: How credible is Russian Fact-check Site GFCN? – DW – 06/04/2025
Russia's new "Global Fact-Checking Network" (GFCN) claims to fight fake news — but experts criticise it as propaganda in fact-checking clothes. Who's behind GFCN and why does it not meet global fact-checking standards? In early April, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs unveiled the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) — a self-proclaimed international alliance of fact-checkers and media outlets. The initiative was first presented at the "Dialogue about Fakes 2.0" forum in Moscow in November 2024. At a press briefing following the April announcement, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova framed the GFCN as a counter to what she called the West's "relentless stream of fake stories and disinformation campaigns, " accusing Western fact-checkers of engaging in "biased pseudo-fact-checking." "This global civic initiative," Zakharova said, "will enable us to counter destructive Western actions using our own constructive agenda." But established fact-checking sites such as Facta and Maldita have raised red flags over the GFCN's Kremlin-aligned backers, opaque operations, and overtly one-sided narratives. DW Fact check takes a closer look. Who's behind the GFCN? The GFCN was co-founded by TASS, Russia's state-run news agency, and the Autonomous Non-Profit Organization (ANPO) "Dialog Regions" — both known for their close ties to the Kremlin. TASS was suspended in 2022 by the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) over concerns about its editorial independence. In 2023, the European Union sanctioned ANPO "Dialog Regions" for its role in spreading disinformation and for operating the pro-Kremlin website War on Fakes. Ahead of Russia's 2024 presidential election, the US Treasury also sanctioned the group under Executive Order 14024, targeting individuals and entities linked to the Russian government. Does the GFCN meet global fact-checking standards? Independent fact-checking relies on transparency, verifiable sourcing, and open methodologies. Leading organizations such as the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) require fact-checks to cite public data and provide transparent methods that others can replicate. DW reviewed several GFCN articles and found consistent problems with sourcing and methodology. In one article titled "The Romanian Elections: How Did the West Win Only on the Second Try?" , the author cites the 2024 Eurobarometer, claiming only 22% of Romanians support aid to refugees, only 14% back the EU's actions on Ukraine, and only 13% favor Ukraine's EU candidate status. But these figures are false. DW cross-checked the data and found significantly higher levels of Romanian support for EU policies on Ukraine in the 2024 Eurobarometer, contradicting the article's core claim. Another piece alleges that the Soros family was the "shadow organizer" behind the "HANDS OFF!" protests against US President Donald Trump's second administration, which took place across the United States on April 5, 2025. The article argues that, since some organizers had previously received grants from the Open Society Foundations, the Soros family must have orchestrated the protest. That's misleading. The piece focuses narrowly on two groups — MoveOn and Indivisible — and ignores the broader coalition behind the rallies. While both organizations have indeed received funding from Open Society Foundations, the grants supported general programming, not the April 5 protests specifically. Moreover, these groups list dozens of funders, not just the Soros-backed foundation. Receiving support from Open Society Foundations doesn't prove direct involvement on the part of the Soros family, whose philanthropic work has long been targeted by conspiracy theorists. These narratives often paint Soros as a puppet master behind protests, migration, or global unrest — claims that have been widely discredited. Another GFCN article titled "Is ChatGPT Prone to Russian Propaganda?" fails to seriously engage with the question it raises. Instead, it spends most of its word count defending TASS and attacking a Norwegian media outlet that questioned the Russian agency's credibility. The article barely mentions recent investigations — such a report by NewsGuard, which DW covered — which document Russian attempts to manipulate generative AI platforms. The piece's only conclusion appears in the final paragraph, which vaguely states: "It is incorrect to give a chatbot human qualities and accuse it of 'preferring' one of the sources to the others." GFCN: Who is writing these stories? One contributor to the GFCN is Sonja van den Ende, a Dutch journalist living in Russia who has been embedded with Russian troops in Ukraine. Some Dutch media have described her as a conspiracy theorist. On X, she recently posted : "Germany is the country of knife pullers, used to be a country of beer and bratwurst, now asylum seekers, i.e. radicalized rebels from Syria, Iraq etc." Other GFCN contributors include Tim Anderson, director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has called the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha a "scam" and falsely claimed that Russia's invasion of Ukraine did not involve the targeting of civilian infrastructure. Russian propaganda: Deepfake videos tougher to detect To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A familiar Russian playbook: mimic and confuse Observers say the GFCN's name — just one letter removed from the IFCN — is no accident. The International Fact-Checking Network, founded in 2015 by the Poynter Institute, is a respected consortium of more than 150 independent fact-checkers worldwide. It trains journalists, enforces professional standards, and certifies outlets based on transparency and editorial independence. The GFCN, on the other hand, appears to follow a long-standing tactic of the Russian state: imitating legitimate institutions to blur the line between journalism and propaganda. "We do not consider their activities to fall within the professional fact-checking ecosystem," IFCN director Angie Drobnic Holan told DW, citing Russia's consistent suppression of independent journalism and reliance on state-run entities to promote its political agenda. "Professional fact-checking requires the ability to independently verify claims across the political spectrum," she said. "Journalists must be free to publish findings that contradict the government. We are highly dubious that this effort allows for that." Tommaso Canetta, a policy officer with the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), called the GFCN a classic case of political appropriation. "This is a tactic we've seen many times; co-opting terms with credibility, like 'fact-checking,' and stripping them of meaning," he explained. "Political actors often label partisan narratives as 'fact checks' when they clearly are not." He stressed that affiliations with networks like the IFCN or the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) help distinguish legitimate outlets from those engaged in manipulation. "Without such standards, we end up with initiatives — like this one from Russia — that pollute the term and muddy the waters." This article was written and edited by the DW Fact Check team.
DW
11 hours ago
- DW
Germany updates: Chancellor Merz on first trip to Washington – DW – 06/04/2025
Politics Germany Germany updates: Chancellor Merz on first trip to Washington Kieran Burke with dpa, AFP, Reuters, AP 06/04/2025 June 4, 2025 The German Chancellor will be meeting President Trump on Thursday on his inaugural visit to the US. Meanwhile, a massive evacuation effort is taking place in Cologne as three WWII bombs are being defused. DW has more.
