London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Jul 30, 2025

When Justice Is Out of Reach

When Justice Is Out of Reach

Accountability is a long way off for Bashar al-Assad. But the world can still preserve the memories of what has happened in Syria.

Some years ago, I was given an assignment by Vanity Fair to track down war criminals and former dictators who, despite being ousted from power, hadn’t yet seen justice. As I hunted down their villas on the French Riviera, one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the world, or in the cobbled side streets of Paris’s 16th arrondissement, I was reminded, not for the first time, that after war or upheaval, bad guys rarely face a timely reckoning.

Instead, they can live in luxury—like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who had the run of enormous private properties in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before his death in the resort city in 2019, and whose cronies remain free. Some face a measure of justice, but much delayed, like Saddam Hussein, or die at the hands of their victims, like Muammar Qaddafi. A few manage to cling to power, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad falls into that final group. He is still fighting a decade-long civil war, but effectively, Assad has won, after orchestrating the murder, rape, torture, and chemical gassing of his own people. He will not face justice, at least not for now. The International Criminal Court has limited jurisdiction in Syria, because Damascus never signed its governing treaty.

This does not mean, however, that the international community should give up attempting to bring about justice. Mechanisms are in place to ensure that this pursuit can continue—such as Germany’s and France’s attempts at exercising what is known as universal jurisdiction, or a potential war-crimes investigation, in the U.K. against Assad’s wife, Asma, who is a British citizen.

And even if justice cannot be secured through these means, much else can still be done until it is.

When a civil war does eventually end, what comes next? Does a country just start anew? What if the conflict’s perpetrators will not be punished for decades, if ever? Beyond the pursuit of justice, how important is it to remember?

By 2011, when the Syrian conflict began, many of the country’s people had smartphones. That meant that when a barrel bomb was dropped on Aleppo, when someone was dragged out of their home in the middle of the night, when a protester was beaten or shot in the street, an ordinary citizen might have cataloged it.

Those photos—as well as thousands of documents that have been bravely smuggled out of Syria—are now in the hands of United Nations investigators working in a kind of war-crimes clearinghouse in Geneva known as the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM). This evidence includes material collected by the likes of the White Helmets, first responders who work in Syria. Even if the Syrian war were to end tomorrow, and all respective parties put down their weapons, justice would not be meted out immediately. The preservation of memory, however, doesn’t have to wait.

The White Helmets are, in a sense, guardians of memory. They wore GoPro cameras on their helmets during the worst of the conflict, so even as they were digging through rubble to find survivors of bombings—and, inevitably, dead bodies—they were documenting Russian and Syrian government atrocities. (Unsurprisingly, the Russian bombers who have aided Assad have specifically gone after the White Helmets, targeting them as they attempt to rescue victims of attacks; other pro-Assad groups have launched internet campaigns to discredit them.)

Syria is not the first country to confront this problem of preserving memory. In 2007, decades after General Francisco Franco’s death, Spain passed the poetically named Historical Memory Law, allocating funds for exhuming mass graves, and to bury the dead. More important than the money doled out are the law’s psychological aspects: It finally gave rights to victims and their descendants, and formally condemned the Franco regime.

Two other brutal conflicts I have covered, in which many bad guys walked away, also offer lessons—Bosnia and Rwanda. Unlike the perpetrators in those places, Assad remains in power. But those two countries today can inform what happens next in Syria.

Commemorating victims is an important part of post-conflict healing. Both Bosnia and Rwanda have done important work in this regard. Every July, a painful commemoration takes place in Srebrenica, where families of the approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were slaughtered by Bosnian Serbs gather in a field dominated by white headstones. Underneath lie the victims’ bones. Not all of the Srebrenica victims’ remains have been found, but the International Commission on Missing Persons, an NGO, works tirelessly to match DNA samples to bones so that families can have some closure. All of this to preserve memory.

In Kigali, memory is retained in a different way. The remains of some 250,000 victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide—a significant proportion of the 800,000 people who were killed overall—are interred, held in a memorial that has become an educational center aiming to ensure that generations born long after the slaughter remember how far hatred can go. It’s an impressive site: Foreign diplomats and UN officials leave moved, and often cite Rwanda as a model of post-conflict resolution.

All of these efforts have shortcomings. Rwanda, for example, works hard to retain memory, but its present points to the challenges of fully moving past conflict: The country’s strongman ruler, Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, leads the Rwandan Patriotic Front; UN reports have previously accused his forces of war crimes against Hutus.

And memorials don’t always heal wounds. When a Swedish artist attempted to memorialize the 2011 killings of 77 people in Norway, most of them young political activists, some Norwegians protested that it would bring only more pain. And although Srebrenica is commemorated every year, I have spoken with younger Bosnians who would prefer to leave the past behind—they do not want memories, nor do they want to visit the graves. They want to focus on the future.

For the moment, accountability in Syria needs to be put on hold. There is simply no realistic short-term path to obtain it. But I have witnessed enough wars to know that, one day, the country’s government will change. Assad will fall. His moment of reckoning will not be evaded.

When the opportunity to deliver justice does arrive, we must be prepared. The international community should focus on recording the horrors perpetrated by Assad and his regime so that when he is put before a court, we can call upon the work of those who lived them—the humanitarians, the journalists, the refugees, the survivors. We must preserve memory.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Former Judge Charged After Drunk Driving Crash Kills Comedian in Brazil
Jeff Bezos hasn’t paid a dollar in taxes for decades. He makes billions and pays $0 in taxes, LEGALLY
China Increases Use of Exit Bans Amid Rising U.S. Tensions
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Procter & Gamble to Raise U.S. Prices to Offset One‑Billion‑Dollar Tariff Cost
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
Botswana Seeks Controlling Stake in De Beers as Anglo American Prepares Exit
Trump Administration Proposes Repeal of Obama‑Era Endangerment Finding, Dismantling Regulatory Basis for CO₂ Emissions Limits
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
A family has been arrested in the UK for displaying the British flag
Mel Gibson refuses to work with Robert De Niro, saying, "Keep that woke clown away from me."
Trump Steamrolls EU in Landmark Trade Win: US–EU Trade Deal Imposes 15% Tariff on European Imports
ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman says people share personal info with ChatGPT but don’t know chats can be used as court evidence in legal cases.
The British propaganda channel BBC News lies again.
Deputy attorney general's second day of meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell has concluded
Controversial March in Switzerland Features Men Dressed in Nazi Uniforms
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
Thai Civilian Death Toll Rises to 12 in Cambodian Cross-Border Attacks
TSUNAMI: Trump Just Crossed the Rubicon—And There’s No Turning Back
Over 120 Criminal Cases Dismissed in Boston Amid Public Defender Shortage
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
Trump Announces $550 Billion Japanese Investment and New Trade Agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
×