Germany will Tuesday start its first war crimes trial over atrocities in Syria, as a mass refugee influx brings not only witnesses and victims but also suspects into the country.<\/p>\n
Aria L., a 21-year-old German national and suspected jihadist, posted on Facebook photos of himself posing next to two decapitated heads in Syria -- and his case is not the only one from the war-torn country to occupy German justice.<\/p>\n
\"Ten investigations linked to Syria or Iraq are currently being examined by the federal prosecutor, on top of more than 30 cases against former jihadists over their membership in a terrorist group,\" said a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.<\/p>\n
Among other key war crimes suspects are Ibrahim Al F., a 41-year-old Syrian and the alleged leader of an Islamist rebel group known for kidnapping and torturing civilians in Aleppo.<\/p>\n
Another suspect is Suliman A.S., a 24-year-old Syrian suspected of having kidnapped a UN soldier in 2013.<\/p>\n
Such investigations have gained momentum particularly as 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany last year, about 40 percent of whom fled the wars in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n
Authorities dealing with their asylum requests have picked up and sent 25 to 30 tips every day to prosecutors, as Germany since 2013 requires applicants to complete a form asking if they have witnessed war crimes or could name perpetrators of violations.<\/p>\n
\"The refugee influx has provided new opportunities for prosecutors to collect specific information,\" said Geraldine Mattioli, expert on international justice at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n
Germany is no stranger to trying war crimes committed abroad, although past attempts have been met with mixed success.<\/p>\n
In 1993, pushed by an inflow of refugees fleeing the war in Yugoslavia, Germany formed a special police unit dedicated to investigating war crimes committed in the Balkans.<\/p>\n
Other European countries took similar action, with one of the most active investigations carried out by Dutch police.<\/p>\n
German prosecutors eventually examined 127 cases and heard 4,500 witnesses. But the Herculean effort led to only four trials, including a genocide conviction.<\/p>\n
Undeterred, the prosecution service sought ways to refine their procedure, becoming more sophisticated in tackling cases involving massacres in Africa's Great Lakes region.<\/p>\n
There, the judiciary dispatched its investigators to collect evidence on the ground and sought to offer better protection for witnesses.<\/p>\n
The painstaking task led to the convictions of two Rwandan rebel leaders for masterminding massacres in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo from their homes in Germany.<\/p>\n
Yet during the costly trial lasting four and a half years, some charges had to be dropped due to lack of evidence and witnesses.<\/p>\n
There are multiple geographical, cultural and linguistic challenges prosecutors face as they seek to build a case, jurist Juergen Schurr wrote in a report for the association Redress.<\/p>\n
\"The mass crimes affect, typically, a large number of suspects, traumatised and often marginalised victims and witnesses with a foreign language and culture,\" he wrote.<\/p>\n
Investigators dealing with Syrian cases face the additional challenge of access. With the war still raging, they are unable to travel there to gather evidence.<\/p>\n
And while propaganda images posted by jihadist fighters on social networks offer a glimpse of the atrocities, it is difficult to authenticate the photos or their provenance.<\/p>\n
But with the mass arrivals of refugees, Germany is taking a pro-active stance by collecting information bit by bit, and filing it away country by country, rather than wait for specific accusations before taking action.<\/p>\n
The hope is that each minute detail being collected could one day help build a broader picture or point to a specific trend.<\/p>\n
One shortcoming is that the process rarely targets high-ranking officials of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, as comparatively few Syrian soldiers have become refugees arriving in Europe, Mattioli said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Mattioli said about the search for justice, \"it has to start somewhere\".<\/p>\n
After all, the proceedings carried out by Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Finland, are, for the moment, the only ones that seek to curb impunity in Syria.<\/p>\n
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Germany will Tuesday start its first war crimes trial over atrocities in Syria, as a mass refugee influx brings not only witnesses and victims but also suspects into the country. Aria L., a 21-year-old German national and suspected jihadist, posted on Facebook photos of himself posing next to two decapitated heads in Syria -- and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":66436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2499],"class_list":["post-27104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-tribunals","ji_location-syria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n