| When Mustafa died, in the earthquakes in Turkey, his work in Syria had assisted in the prosecutions of numerous figures in Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; Source photograph from Getty A Syrian lawyer who went by the name of Mustafa worked tirelessly over the course of a decade, taking tremendous personal risks, in order to secure an unprecedented trove of war-crimes evidence against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. As Ben Taub reports in a gripping new story, Mustafa’s efforts for a group called the Commission for International Justice and Accountability involved developing sources within the opposition, smuggling documents, and crossing borders, all while protecting his family by attempting to keep his identity a secret. Mustafa would go on to help construct what Taub identifies as “the first Syrian war-crimes brief that focusses on the conduct of hostilities,” and which outlines “a litany of crimes, ranging from indiscriminate shelling to mass executions of civilians who were rounded up and killed in warehouses and factories as regime forces swept through.” Mustafa would eventually come under direct threat from the regime, but, in the end, he was killed not by assassins or soldiers but by a tragic natural disaster—he was crushed by an earthquake this February in Turkey. The results of his work, meanwhile, will live on, amassed in the hope of some future day when those in power in Syria may finally be held accountable. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
No comments:
Post a Comment