GENEVA: Despite concerns about the destruction of documents and other indications of serious crimes committed in Syria under Bashar al-Assad’s rule, UN investigators said Friday that plenty of evidence remained unspoiled.
“The country is rich in evidence, and we won’t have huge difficulty in pursuing accountability, criminal justice,” said Hanny Megally of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
The sudden ousting last month of Assad after decades of dictatorship has seen the commission suddenly gain access to Syria, after striving since the early days of the civil war in 2011 to probe from abroad the vast array of alleged abuses.
“It was amazing to be in Damascus after the whole life of the commission not having access to the country at all,” Megally told the Geneva UN correspondents’ association ACANU after a recent visit to Syria.
With families rushing to former prisons, detention centres and suspected mass graves to find any trace of disappeared relatives, many have expressed concern about safeguarding documents and other evidence.
Describing his visits to prisons in Damascus, Megally acknowledged that “a lot of the evidence seems to have been tampered with, and either it was on the ground and you could see people… had been walking all over it, or had been damaged or destroyed.
