Bashar al-Assad accused of war crimes redux

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African national Navi Pillay, said that the Commission of Inquiry into the crimes committeed in Syria, established by her, had collected substantial evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. "They point to the fact that the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state", she added.

The High Commissioner called for President Bashar al-Assad to be brought before an international jurisdiction.

Syria finds itself, de facto, in the same situation she was in after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. United Nations senior officials, as well as many state leaders (US, France, UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia) had accused president Assad of having ordered the murder. However, after two years of high tensions, a UN-Lebanese administrative body—named Special Tribunal for Lebanon but lacking the attributes of an international court—had dropped the case, when it turned out that the prosecution had solely relied on false testimonies. Subsequently, Hezbollah revealed that Israel had reconnoitered the area prior to the attack, and Thierry Meyssan demonstrated that the weapon used for the crime was based on a new technology that only Germany had at the time  [1]. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is slated to start hearings in 2014, in other words 9 years after the facts.

Before occupying her current position as High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR). She is best remembered for her role in establishing that mass rape qualifies as ’’genocide’’.

Al-Assad has been the President of the Syrian Republic since 2000. Ever since the Syrian Accountability Act was passed on 12 December 2003, sending a clear ultimatum to Damascus, the United States have tried by all possible means to get him to resign.