Introduction: Assad and Accountability

For more than a decade, Syrian civil society groups, nongovernmental organizations, international investigators, and many other brave individuals have gathered and assembled evidence originating in Syria of some of the most extensive, systematic crimes against humanity in the modern era. This evidence, comprising more than one million pages of documents and thousands of testimonials by witnesses, has been the basis for a growing number of international criminal investigations and other official actions. Few outside official channels, however, have been able to access this body of evidence. This paper marks the first time that scholars have been granted access to these archives and witness testimonials for the purpose of publication.

As scholars of history and international politics, we believe it imperative that this evidence see the light of day. The statesmen of the twentieth century hoped to create an international system in which horrors such as the Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, and Pol Pot’s genocide could not recur. The Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad has proven this hope a failure. This week in The Hague, on October 10, the International Court of Justice heard evidence put forward by Canada and the Netherlands that under the Assad regime, the Syrian state systematically tortured and abused the Syrian people.

The evidence accumulated since 2011 shows that Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad himself is directly responsible for these crimes against his own people, along with the most senior leaders of his regime. For years, Assad and his allies have tried to deny the reality of the murder, torture, and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Syrians; barring that, they have tried to deflect responsibility for those crimes onto others. But the regime’s crimes, in particular those committed by its military, security-intelligence, and political structures, are exceedingly well-documented. Investigators have acquired over one million pages of primary source materials generated by the Syrian regime itself, supplemented by the testimony of thousands of witnesses, including victims and, crucially, many former Syrian regime insiders.

We draw on these archives and testimonies to examine the role and policies of Bashar al Assad and his most senior lieutenants in the events that unfolded in Syria from the spring of 2011 onward. While the evidence is highly sensitive and access to it is controlled—principally to protect victims, witnesses, and ongoing criminal investigations—we have secured access to a subset of materials in the public domain or from investigative bodies where such disclosure has not compromised the professional ethics of those holding the materials, particularly their duty to protect the identities of victims, witnesses, and suspected perpetrators whose identities are not known to the general public.

The evidence we present in this paper leaves no doubt that Bashar al Assad and his most senior lieutenants launched the large-scale murder, torture, and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Syrians as a matter of state policy in an attempt to crush a peaceful civil protest movement against Assad’s rule. They deliberately ordered vast arrest campaigns, military assaults against Syrian cities, systematic torture of detainees, and displacement of whole communities.

They knew what they were doing. Syrian regime leaders up to Assad himself were well aware of the large-scale slaughter and violence resulting from their orders and took steps to ensure it was done as efficiently as possible. They created coordinating bodies to manage the crackdowns and continually clarified top-level instructions down to the local level. They rewarded and promoted regime officials who energetically implemented this crackdown policy and punished those who did not. And they took steps to hide what they were doing from the world, including by trying to deflect blame onto others for what they themselves had done.

This paper is the first in what we intend to be a series of assessments and studies that will use the Syrian regime’s own documentation, along with thousands of witness statements, to bring to light the horrors Assad and his lieutenants deliberately unleashed upon the Syrian people. We intend this work not just as an academic study, but as part of what must be an effort to hold the Syrian regime accountable for the vast, unspeakable crimes against humanity they have committed.