A College of Law professor will testify to a congressional committee next week about how to prosecute war crimes and the crimes committed against humanity during the Syrian civil war.

David Crane, the professor, has been working with others at Syracuse University on projects like the Chautauqua Blueprint and the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP). These projects develop a case to prosecute atrocities before the conflict ends.

“Usually the international community waits till after the civil war ends and after the atrocities end and then it comes together to decide what’s to be done,” he said in an email. “What we’re doing is getting our act together and doing it now, and that’s never been done before.”

His experience prosecuting war crimes includes three years as founding chief prosecutor of the special court of Sierra Leone, which resulted in the first successful international prosecution of a former head of state for war crimes, he added.

“We’re taking lessons learned from what I did in West Africa and adjusting them and prosecuting, or developing a prosecution plan for, those who have been committing war crimes in Syria,” Crane said.

The staff director and chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee asked Crane to give testimony about a month ago, he said.

Crane co-chaired the drafting committee for the Chautauqua Blueprint, which is a document proposing ways to prosecute atrocity crimes committed during the Syrian crisis. This was signed in August.

He also founded SAP — an effort between students, professors, activists and non-governmental organizations to detail war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Syrian crisis — at the College of Law in 2011.

More than 50 students involved in the SAP collaborate to gather materials future prosecutors can use in trials for Syrian war crimes: lists of atrocities, narratives explaining the conflict, drafts of indictments and maps of army units’ positions relative to certain atrocities.

The Syrian conflict began as a protest against authoritarianism, but escalated into a religious conflict with radicals across the region, said Ryan Suto, a graduate student who worked in SAP, in an email.

Suto said students should care about the issue because the conflict in Syria also has an effect on students at SU.

“We live in a world where ‘their problems’ are ‘our problems’ too,” he said. He added that Syracuse is home to thousands of refugees and could soon see a flow of refugees from Syria as well.

The issue is important because Syrian leaders need to be held accountable to create peace and stability in Syria after the civil war, said Michael Scharf, a co-chair of the drafting committee for the Chautauqua Blueprint, in an email.

Crane also started the “I am Syria” project with two goals, he said: to raise worldwide awareness for Syria and to help teachers craft lesson plans to explain the crisis to their students.

“The world has decided that mankind is threatened and its moral fiber weakened if we do not hold those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide accountable,” Crane said. “Syracuse students should always care and be concerned about these issues and stand up and have their voices heard.”

—Asst. News Editor Maggie Cregan contributed reporting to this article.

 

Published on October 22, 2013 at 1:30 am