International Court Addresses Syrian Torture Case

Shadows of Syrian anti-government protestors reflected on a poster of Bashar al-Assad during a rally where the military open fired on civilians. AP Photo/ Muzaffar Salman

The International Court of Justice has addressed the 12-year legacy of torture and false imprisonment of the Syrian Assad Administration for the first time on Oct 11, 2023. The case, brought forward by Canada and the Netherlands, accused Assad of violating the UN’s Convention against Torture (CAT), which Syria has opted in to. 

Syria’s Civil War saw the mass incarceration of those who opposed Assad's dictatorship. Placed in prisons characterised by vicious torture routines and inhumane conditions, it is estimated that 14,000 people have died after detention and 130,000 people are still missing. According to the New York Times, Syria remains accused of war crimes such as torture by “hanging people by one limb, like cattle, serial sexual assaults, and beating prisoners,” organized disappearances, and use of chemical weapons on civilian populations. 

Collecting proof of Syrian war crimes has been difficult in the past 12 years, however milestones in collecting and analyzing evidence have been achieved by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) through their 2015 ‘If The Dead Could Speak’ report. 

The report details a series of 55,000 photos evidencing the torture inflicted on detained civilians. They were smuggled out of Syria in 2014 by a defected military forensic photographer operating under the pseudonym Caesar who was “recruited to head a secret burial squad” for the government. He claims to have overseen seven years of weekly offloading of bodies from refrigerated trucks coming from overflowing bodies in “security prisons, the police stations, (and) military hospitals”. 

HRW analyzed 28,707 images of individuals who died in government custody – all of which featured identification numbers as part of Syria’s bureaucratic effort to document its crimes. The report was able to categorize these images into 6,786 separate victims. Furthermore, the report identified the location of morgues, detention centers, military hospitals along with interviews with defectors from Damascus security branches.

The emergency ruling included legal representatives of Canada and the Netherlands, however Syria refused to participate. They previously objected to the summons, claiming that the Netherlands had no right to address human rights within Syria as it ”exceed[s] the UN and international law”. 

The Syrian government delegation refused to participate in the preliminary hearings in The Hague, Netherlands on October 10, 2023. AP Photo/ Peter Dejong