For victims of Syria’s decadelong war – including 6.6 million people in exile – a verdict in a German courtroom Jan. 13 brings hope of someday healing their society. A judge found Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian intelligence officer, guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. He had been in charge of investigating activists – often with the use of torture – during the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprising. He later fled to Germany where he was discovered by one of his victims and tried under a legal principle of universal jurisdiction.
The trial was the first time that Syrians who had been wronged – 50 in all testified against him – could confront a perpetrator of the Assad regime’s atrocities. It was also a chance to affirm the dignity of victims, which is a key part of the justice eventually needed to prevent a recurrence of conflict in Syria.
The verdict comes weeks after another German court convicted a fighter with the Islamic State group for the death of a girl from the Yazidi ethnic group in Iraq. Both verdicts reflect an effort in several European countries to capture and try those responsible for heinous crimes abroad. Even more so, the trials reflect a widening movement to work side by side with those victimized by conflicts to document atrocities in hopes of achieving justice and, perhaps, national reconciliation.
A group called Afghan Witness, for example, has begun to collect a body of evidence on human rights incidents under the new Taliban regime for potential use in future prosecutions. For the civil war in Myanmar, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners is relying on witnesses and open-source tools to gather information about atrocities committed by the ruling military and other groups.
Yet the scope of Syria’s long conflict could be the largest effort to assist victims through accurate documentation of reports of crimes and atrocities. In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to set up a special body to prepare evidence for the eventual prosecutions in Syria.
Listening to people who have been persecuted and allowing them to voice their suffering has proved to be an essential part of bringing peace to a conflict. Victim groups in Colombia, for example, were key players in negotiating an end to that country’s half-century war. Often, victims merely want the truth about what happened during a war. In seeking to break the cycle of bloodshed, they sometimes advocate for a balance between justice and the need for leniency and forgiveness.
The verdict in the German court is just a start to restore the individual dignity of those harmed by Syria’s war. It helps them not be resigned to injustice, to bring forth more evidence, and to become agents for peace. Those most hurt by a war can be the ones who help end it. They might then be able to lose the identity of victimhood.
