UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations panel investigating potential war crimes in Syria’s civil war threatened on Friday to release a closely guarded list of names of those it accuses of having raped, tortured and carried out executions during the conflict. The move was part of an effort to increase pressure on world powers to pursue justice for what it calls crimes that “shock the conscience of humanity.”
The confidential lists — four have been compiled so far, and a fifth combining all of them is underway — contain scores of names, according to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and have been seen by no one other than its four members. The commission, in a report released Friday, said it was considering releasing the names at the annual meeting of the Human Rights Council next month, saying that not doing so “at this juncture of the investigation would be to reinforce the impunity that the commission was mandated to combat.”
The report, the ninth released by the commission, said the confidential list of names included “commanders of army and security units, including heads of detention facilities and other individuals operating under the command of the government or in its support, and commanders of nonstate armed groups, including the so-called ‘emirs’ of radical groups.”
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The prospects of gaining consensus on the Council for a special tribunal to try suspects seem slim. Still, Mark Lyall Grant, the British ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the Security Council could again consider referring the Syrian situation to the International Criminal Court, given the Council’s shared concern for the rise of terrorism in Syria, while insisting that the government “bears the ultimate responsibility” for protecting its citizens. Britain supported the initial draft measure.
The report on Friday also pointed to paths to justice that do not require the Security Council’s blessing. The report calls on countries that belong to the International Criminal Court to refer its own citizens to the court, though the court is reserved for the most serious crimes, usually committed at the highest levels. The report asks countries to exercise the law of universal jurisdiction to prosecute anyone accused of grave crimes, like torture. In principle, the international court can also seek the Commission of Inquiry’s help in identifying suspects who are citizens of those countries.
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