(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM))
GENEVA, 3rd March, 2018 (WAM) -- The UN human rights chief warned on Friday that perpetrators of war crimes committed in east Ghouta, and elsewhere in Syria, are being identified and will be held accountable.
"Civilians are being pounded into submission or death," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told the Geneva-based Human Rights Council during an urgent meeting on situation in east Ghouta, where some 400,000 civilians are trapped amid daily airstrikes, shelling and the reported release of toxic agents, which have killed and injured hundreds of people in the past two weeks alone.
The UN human rights chief said, "The perpetrators of these crimes must know they are being identified; that dossiers are being built up with a view to their prosecution; and that they will be held accountable for what they have done."
He explained that over the past four months, some high-profile perpetrators were brought to justice: Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic was convicted of genocide; Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano has been extradited to Spain to face charges related to killings in San Salvador in 1989; and two Argentinian former Navy Captains, Alfredo Astiz and Jorge Eduardo Acosta, were convicted for crimes against humanity committed between 1976 and 1983.
"The wheels of justice may be slow, but they do grind," Al Hussein said, noting that the Human Rights Council can have a real impact in ensuring that there will be justice – determined, inescapable and effective – for the suffering that has been inflicted on the Syrian people.
He added that Syria must be referred to the International Criminal Court, ICC, urging all states to greatly increase their support for the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, IIIM, set up last year with its mandate focused on ensuring that information about serious crimes is collected, analysed and preserved, with a view to furnishing dossiers for future prosecutions.
Al Hussein strongly encouraged the Council to renew the mandate of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
WAM/Nour Salman
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