Despite concerns over the destruction of key documents and evidence linked to alleged crimes under Bashar al-Assad’s rule, UN investigators remain optimistic that enough material remains intact to pursue justice.
Hanny Megally, a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, stated on Friday that Syria is still “rich in evidence” and that accountability efforts would not be significantly hindered. “We won’t have huge difficulty in pursuing accountability, criminal justice,” he told journalists in Geneva following a recent visit to the country.
The commission, which has spent over a decade investigating human rights abuses from abroad due to Assad’s resistance to international scrutiny, gained sudden access to Syria following the leader’s unexpected ousting in December. “It was amazing to be in Damascus after the whole life of the commission not having access to the country at all,” Megally said.
With families now desperately searching former prisons, detention centers, and suspected mass graves for traces of disappeared relatives, concerns have grown about the fate of key evidence. Megally acknowledged that many sites showed signs of tampering. “A lot of the evidence seems to have been tampered with—either it was on the ground and you could see people had been walking all over it, or it had been damaged or destroyed,” he said.
The notorious Saydnaya prison complex, long associated with extrajudicial executions, torture, and forced disappearances, has been largely stripped of documents. Megally noted that some locations showed clear signs of deliberate destruction, with rooms that appeared to have been used to burn records. “We’ve all seen reports of people having taken away documents with them,” he added.
However, the commission remains hopeful that Syria’s highly bureaucratic state may have retained duplicates. “It’s a system that probably kept duplicates if not triplicates of everything,” Megally said, suggesting that critical records may still exist elsewhere.
Despite deliberate attempts to erase incriminating material, other parts of key buildings remain intact, offering valuable evidence for future investigations. “It seemed that there’s still quite a lot of evidence that’s protected now, and we hope can be used in future accountability,” Megally said.
The UN commission is expected to continue its investigations on the ground, gathering testimony and analyzing recovered materials to support future justice efforts.
