close the conflict in syria set a new benchmark for cruelty and impunity more than any other war it capitalized on the public's repulsion of violence and produced suffering not only as an in result of hostilities but also deliberately for political and. can these kinds of crimes be. in a court of law to discuss that i'm now joined by katrina. of the international impartial independent mechanism on the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in syria since march two thousand and eleven. it's great talking to you thank you very much for your time and i've been interviewing people in positions of power for quite some time but i have to say this is the longest title i've ever come across twenty one awards not counting articles and positions all to express the idea that this is not exactly the tribunal but it may lead to one is that accurate. what is accurate

is that it's not a trade you know. and it is indeed to assist in investigating investigation and prosecution of those crimes and of the person that may be found responsible for it but as it is not a tribunals indeed this mechanism has only a sense if it can turn its files or its evidence to tribunals now you call it impartial and independent despite the fact that the key actors in the in the syrian the war like the syrian arab republic or russia. don't even recognize the legitimacy of this mechanism don't you think that these terms impartial independent require the support of everybody in order to be applicable. they are extremely important terms in the in the title i don't call it it was named this way by the

by the general assembly which decided to adopt establish this mechanism. one hundred and five states voted in favor of this mechanism but indeed fifteen including russia and the syrian arab republic decided to vote against and they have explained reasons why they do that fifty two states decided to abstain so if the question is whether that. those modalities of the adoption actually renders this mechanism less legitimate or whether it's impossible for us to be independent and impartial my answer is no i think being independent impartial is not just. not just terms in the name of the mechanism that our principle that i but also my entire team are extremely committed to but the legitimacy of our war but when you speak about impartiality the united states was one of the driving

forces behind the creation of this mechanism. and the american ambassador to the united nations nikki haley's specifically stated that she sees the triple i a valuable tool to quote hold the assad regime accountable for the atrocities including its repeated and i'm going to use of chemical weapons now i understand that that may sound as impartial in washington maybe even in geneva but in moscow or in damascus is that a misunderstanding or perhaps a misrepresentation of the mandate maybe official explain what it means to earth in the mechanism in part being impartial and independent i would start with independence independence means that you're not going to take instruction from any of the states and we know that in the situation of syria the states have agendas so not taking instruction not acting according to agenda. what does it mean it means that you are doing your work professionally you are looking seeking to receive

information from a very key of source not just certain sources what does it mean being impartial it means that you are showing. generally but also showing no bias in favor or against any of that i understand what you're saying you're talking about your methods of work but there are also other considerations that come into that and one of that is funding you are funded so far on the voluntary basis when the one of your main sponsors cames comes out and states the purpose for this mechanism in very stark geopolitical terms i wonder why would you expect for example the syrian state to cooperate with you in good faith i cannot speak for the states the states are taking their responsibility when they speak against say is that whether a state is currently under voluntary contribution funding our mechanism or not this will not lead to any change of attitude on our side as to how we conduct our work

what i would like the syrian arab republic representative to understand and that's what i've tried to convey to them and any of the victims from whichever side they may. they need be is that the mandate that was given to us is brought it's not targeting one particular side to this conflict it is broad it is focusing on identifying investigating first building fires are concerned with the more serious crimes and your title refers to the most serious crimes and seriousness is like beauty it's in the eye of the beholder why words this particular formulation chosen as opposed to let's say crimes against humanity or war crimes which covered the. well defined legal standard. if mike recollection is correct the same terminology if you wish was used in previous. accountability

mechanism now i'm thinking more of tribunals which we are not but really there is no ambiguity as to what crimes we're talking about we're talking about the most serious present under international criminal law which are. indeed as you stated war crimes crimes against humanity genocide but even under that category in fact when you look at the very. scale of atrocities you must be extremely modest as to the capacity to investigate all of that selecting and showing in your selection that you are actually doing what you say you do which is to look across the board and not focusing or targeting only one side is extremely important well let me follow up on that because the countries in-doors the creation of this mechanism includes some countries which support it insurgency often for an insurgency in syria by covert and overt means. without officially declaring war on syria and oftentimes in contradiction with their own domestic

legislation theoretically speaking does this fall under the triple i am definition of serious crimes is that something that you intend to look into i will look at it maybe slightly differently in me maybe explain to you the methodology because i think that that explains it or we could have decided to collect. information or evidence on the basis of what easier to collect or we could as we have chose a methodology that was going to be. at a given us a capacity to answer the very question that one has to answer when looking at crimes against humanity war crimes or genocide so what we decided to do is to actually undertake what i was will call here for your audience a structural investigation and let me explain what it means you start identifying over our question that you have to put yourself in terms of patterns of crimes in

terms of contextual element that you will need to be able to establish a was fact. you look at you you try to answer questions such as can i identify recurrent crimes and a n.t. for a structure of power though certain might go it's my question. are you going to apply that structural analysis to the nature of the syrian the war we're going to replace that structure to the entirety of the situation to try to identify indeed those entities structure of power involved iraq the structures of power only in syria or beyond that we're going to look at what could be relevant to establishing liability so when you look at globally to you look indeed at two broad i don't want to use but the legal term but two broad categories. command structures on the one hand that would be relevant for command responsibility you also look at actions which

may qualify as. assisting huli. dating the commission of crime the legal expert in this is difficult for me. to draw a conclusion from what you just said but i do understand that the response to my question would actually be yes that you will not only be looking in syria but beyond syria asked two who have contributed to that war we can look at what indeed can be. a means which would entail a billy t. criminal responsibility for the crap and that's not the physical perpetrator of the crime that goes beyond that including those who aid the commission of a crime you know as i was preparing for this interview i devoted some time to studying the materials of the nuremberg trials which dealt a lot with the issue of the war of aggression which the chief u.s. prosecutor at the time robert jackson defined in his opening address as the

provision of support to the armbands formed in the territory of another state and which according to him and many of his colleagues at the nuremberg trials was the biggest crime a war because it allowed all the other crimes that happened on that territory to happen do you think this kind of logic this kind of rationale should be applied to the syrian war what do you think is that we should concentrate on. conduct that can quickly. crimes against humanity and genocide and indeed look generally and broadly enough to the various conduct that can attach responsibility for all our lives. when you talk about the crime of aggression supporting terrorism or supporting armed groups on the territory of another state i'm actually not looking at the crimes that i described at the moment that's really the focus of our war. our focus but that includes condo that could. facilitate the commission of crimes

you've referred to financing certain groups that are involved in the collection of crime weapons something that some countries are these kind of calm here and there probably is kind of conduct for part of what a structure investigation and and a criminal investigation looks at it yes part of your mandate is also to. the evidence and the strength of the evidence to contextualize this evidence and are assumed that in order to do that you will have to define the war in syria first whether it was a war of aggression a war of defense a civil war how do you can tax charlize your evidence what's the framework and i think the question is really relevant to for instance war crimes because that's one of the one of the crimes for for crimes against humanity you don't need to qualify the conflict in fact legally but for war crimes. identifying whether there was

a conflict or. clear and we're just not answering that even if you waited because if you just defined that one now but because this is a very relevant question because an air raid on the civilian neighborhood may be considered as a crime against humanity but if you put it within the framework of war and when you know that for example that neighborhood was attacked because there are terrorists there who have been attacking other neighborhoods and we've been using it as a base if that changes the marine word you asking me whether it could be manipulated that love the way you see. the way see it is those categories of elements of material elements of crime there are well defined by law by jurisprudence so i think we are rigidly safe areas there then of course the act of analyzing whether the evidence that you collect is sufficient to conclude on each of these element of crime that's that's what are you going to consider those nuances but we're going to consider to apply accrue no limit to dollar gee to first

of all assess whether the evidence we collect is credible and relevant and see but also credible so when you ask whether for many pollution can arise many predation then of course a rise in the context of of producing evidence for fake evidence for many plated evidence or it's a classic. recurrent and very familiar technique of being very cautious with what is presented to you as a piece of evidence and you have techniques to deal with that defend it depends on the nature of the evidence in question. very careful and strip a list scrutiny of the testing when you for instance is away but if you're dealing with evidence in the form of videos for instance or you look at different different aspect when you look at documents you need to look for it and c.t.t. and the techniques to do that matter marcie you really i have to stop you for

a second we need to take a very short break but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. i've been saying the number to be in this matter us is over one trillion dollars and. more than terms like for example. eighty five percent will be well you want to be old bridge with six percent market so thirty percent is one of your own with four hundred to five hundred person for sure and one rose to one hundred thousand dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars a are you industrial. but don't let the numbers all the little. the only numbers you need remember it was one show you know for

a minute the one and only. welcome back to all the parts that are with katrina markie had the behavior i'm authorized back and forth to the investigation and assessment of evidence of crimes committed in syria since march two thousand and eleven madame markey the mechanism was created by the un general assembly in the final days of the barack obama's

administration it was allows them the month before they know here ation of donald trump has this change of power in the united states a fact that the development of this body in any way i don't think so the general assembly. gave us this mandate the secretary general. shortly thereafter appointed. requested assistance from the high commissioner for human rights to appoint a starter. the secretary general define very quickly the terms of reference and then we started operating shortly after my my nomination so i don't think politics in the us or elsewhere have really affected the development of that as far as i know as of late may this year the trumpet ministration was still holding out

of the funding for the for the mechanism and according to the washington post they may be wrong but this is what i was using as a source that hold on funding may be indefinite how critical is the american contributions to the functioning of this entity. not more critical than any other state as you know we are we addressed it a little earlier the fact that we are currently in a situation of a voluntary contribution that in itself honestly i don't see as an inch an issue of potential affecting potentially affecting our independence because as i explained when i'm not by listing the deal it is you need just this line of a little you're totally right. we are vulnerable if we can't sustain our war funding and that's why it's so important that general assembly last second it was last december two thousand and seventeen called upon the thinkers are general to include the funding needs of of tripoli within. the next budget for that the budget

for two thousand and twenty that's important for us because you will understand. you know you realize the importance of the task that is upon us we need to be able to concentrate all of our efforts on doing our job if i'm not wrong the operational cost for the mechanisms to first year was estimated as they made it there on thirteen billion dollars per year which includes salaries and un mandated privileges for. awfully fifty staff members is that how much this entity is expected to cost in the coming years or are you expecting some fluctuation in two thousand eight hundred thirteen million was the estimation that was made before even my appointment they're worse. aspect of the funding that were identified in the report of the secretary general so it's not that those issues were not taken into account but it was just simply not possible at the time

to have an estimate of how much it would cost so those costs were not included in the in those thirteen million and give you one very notable example the cost of securing the evidence. of dealing with in the particle context of syria an unprecedented amount of video material but if you want to do this work properly you really need to store safely securely very large amount of evidence you can't just decide to go for a little part because i mean that would question your impartiality as well we now know that the cost of only that. is approximately it's a little more than two million per year the exact amount of money that we need for two thousand and eighteen is fourteen million and i expect the budget that we will seek to attain to be to be or that i interviewed the u.n. secretary general just

a few weeks ago and he was very open about. a lot of cost cutting and coast optimization that he and his colleagues have to do at this point in time especially due to the decrease in the american contributions do you have any concerns that this matter a mechanism is going to be downsized even before it had a chance to develop for well i'm an optimistic person so i don't want to consider that what i will say seriously is that there are certain areas where you can't compromise so sake safety security. to collect it would be in this mechanism as really the potential of becoming a comprehensive central represent free of the evidence so for for this year and situation we need to do that very seriously and broadly enough to be able to do on our joy. if we were to incur costs that would have a an impact i would say on the capacity to run similar tenuously a certain number of cases have they hope i have explained to you we really want to

be able to run cases at the same time and not to decide ok let's focus now on the government or on their hair or on other groups let's or on the four on there is of those groups we want you to be able to do our job at a pace which demonstrate this willingness of being impartial and independent not being able to proceed. at a decent pace is not good for many reasons first of all the trust that you are trying to build will be very difficult to build including from the communities in syria and by communities in syria communities of victims i'm extremely conscious that we're talking about very different group of people they don't they don't live the same situation they are different expectation or maybe different level of trust because of your experience with having spent some time there i don't think anyone is expecting just as there especially from the international community but that is

just a side note let me ask you specifically about the assessment of evidence because during your recent press conference you said that you're not going to take for granted any previous conclusions you're going to go back to the drawing board identify the gaps and use your investigative mandate to fill those gaps by applying a criminal law standard here why is that necessary why wouldn't you trust all the previous conclusions well it's not so much a question is trust me i would say let me explain to you and maybe with you it's an opportunity to explain for instance the different of. mandates and functioning of the commission inquiry and our mechanism a fact finding body be it a human rights failing body or another fact finding body. apply a legal stand up when they reach conclusions which is not a criminal law it's not a fault of them it's due to me just to make it clear for our audience

a criminal law standard is a much more stringent more stringent yes you may be able to reach a conclusion that a system. of crime existed or that certain violations existed without using the quite stringent standards that criminal courts. are pretty situations apply and the level of standard that we have to apply even though we're not a court of one that will work to be relevant to a court is that. it's meant to deliver over talking earlier about how do you decide was a piece of evidence is actually credible and reliable it's corporation not being vulnerable in building a case by relaying a. piece of evidence to establish a very important fact you want to be make sure that you have enough evidence to

meet those standards of course it's for the courts to decide what hat is becoming increasingly more common in international practice is the blurring of lines between prosecutorial and. court functions and i know that your mandate includes for example the investigation of the chemical or biological chemical weapons attacks something that supposedly falls under the mandate of the organization for or for prosecuting prohibition of chemical weapons and i'm sure you know they recently been given. functions of determining who is actually responsible for the crime don't you find that trouble troubling as far as your work is concerned because you are obviously committed to the creation of or the prosecution of there's evidence in the normal court of law don't you. the work of the obviously w. would. essentially make that kind of tribunal unnecessary well

honestly really not at all explain you why i think we are talking a fact if you take the fact finding mission of the a p c w they are looking at evidence to determine according to their standard which again is lower than it is there but this is not a legal standard this is a scientific standard they're trying to use here and to figure they don't all power to them but courts sometimes use scientific evidence to determine certain facts so let's try to unfold this particular example what they do is they did daisy termine based on evidence including scientific expertise to determine whether chemicals were used chemical weapons or chemical used as weapons. what the previous body john body between obesity un un joint investigative mechanism that no longer exists was doing until november last year it was doing that a second layer looking at whether these attacks that the expanded mission determine

to amount to use of control could be attributed to an entry to an absolutely i'm there for russia for example voted against the mechanism pacifically because of star but it was manipulated for political reasons what. what w. is now being given late june in a deal is a decision is to defend my recollection is correct the secretariat is to make arrangements to a law that's exactly my and my question why do you think those functions yet must be given to body has objectivity is sometimes doubted by its own members rather than let's say an organisation an entity like yours which insists on its impartiality and which is proficiency and professional in applying all the girls let me explain you why because we serve two totally different purpose one is to make reports public reports as to on one hand existence of instances of the like

and on the other and attributions they don't use the same standard they make public record if they make an observation before you take a case to court do you seriously believe that this is not going to prejudge the outcome but we have played different littered with cloakroom lumen would have different kinds of education mechanisms what for why would the public have to spend its money i'm not i'm not making. my team is not making its conclusion of like we're not even although we were before yours are there as they are supposed to prepare you for accords exactly and that's why i started by telling your you were quoting me my reporting say you are not going to endorse conclusion yes it's true well. it's a matter of trust will play different methodology so what's very important for us is to get access to the underlying material so so that we don't have to reinvent the will in collecting things that already ease that we will assess this material applying the legal the criminal law stand up we will see whether there are gaps in

the of events to actually reach or complete i would do that already after a certain international body came out in their twenty's as an aside but it doesn't matter well then it doesn't matter if you wanted to ensure the corporation on the syrian side for example but madam mark you know we have to leave it there i really appreciate your being with us today and i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to see your india on same place same time here on a well to part. you know world of big. lot and conspiracies it's time to wake up to

dig deeper to get the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smart or we need to stop slamming the door on the shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the troops the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. to see how many.

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