|
https://now.mmedia.me Irresponsible statements Del Ponte has a record of making shocking but unfounded assertions
Carla del Ponte, who serves on the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, gave an interview last weekend to an Italian language television from her native Switzerland. To many professionals in the international justice system and now the United Nations, it meant trouble. Del Ponte, a former prosecutor in the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and investigator of war crimes in Rwanda, said that there were "concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof" that the Syrian rebels used sarin, a chemical gas. Last night the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria tried to fix it. “The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic wishes to clarify that it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict,” the release read. “As a result, the Commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time,” it added. The question that remains is why del Ponte would make such statements. The 66 year-old Swiss lawyer has always swum against the current. In the 1980s, she tangled with the infamous Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, who tried to blow up her house in Palermo. She has also implicated former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin in a financial scandal and she had the bank accounts of former assassinated Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto frozen. In terms of media statements, del Ponte has always liked to shock, despite the fact that many of her interviews to the press have proved damaging to her cases. In 2004, while she was still the Prosecutor in the ICTY, she told journalists that she would like to prosecute Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in ICTY, and a year later she accused the Vatican of helping Croatia's most-wanted war crimes suspect, General Ante Gotovina, escape capture. In her memoirs published in 2008 she accused Kosovo’s separatist militia leaders of trafficking organs collected from kidnapped Serbs. Her investigation into the matter had proved inconclusive and the accused had been acquitted. And many journalists who covered Kosovo say that one of the reasons evidence was never found was because del Ponte revealed information to the press. Several witnesses who claimed they knew about the organ trafficking network were shot dead. Her statement on Syria made headlines, but also perhaps led to more victims. Decision-makers for whom the take-away from the Syria conflict is the threat to them from ‘Islamists and jihadists’ panicked at the idea that these ‘terrorists’ have gotten their hands on such dangerous weapons. The only losers in the affair are liberal and moderate Syrian opposition factions, which are already receiving less support than the jihadist groups, precisely because the West tends to put them in the same pot as the jihadists. The government in Damascus is probably jumping for joy, and the jihadists and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups couldn’t be happier, since they hate the idea of Western interference in Syria. Investigating massacres and chemical weapons use in Syria is not a question of courage or defiance. It’s a question of understanding what you’re investigating. Syria is not like Bosnia or Kosovo, where you had a defined separatist militia with a clear leader and where it was easy to determine who was responsible for a massacre or a war crime. Syria is a war of shadows, projections, and illusions. The government doesn’t play by the old war rules, it has paramilitary groups to do its dirty work. The rebels are not a homogeneous crowd, under one leader, united in mind and spirit, with one nationalist ideology. The fighters don’t communicate through invisible tentacles and make a unanimous decision to use chemical weapons. The Syrian rebels are not just the Rebels. They are people with different affiliations, different relationships to the government, different ideologies. The Syrian rebels might be al-Qaeda, they might be some other Islamist brigade, they might be the Free Syrian Army, they might be mere criminal mercenary groups with no other ideology than making money by doing the dirty work of other political factions. Del Ponte referred to the investigating team’s finding of one testimony indicating the use of sarin gas by the rebels. Just visit clinics treating Syrian refugees in Tripoli, north Lebanon, and they will tell you about “strange cases of intoxication.” One Syrian paramedic told NOW a few months ago that in mid-2012 his clinic in Tripoli treated six people coming from Homs of an unidentified intoxication. He said the doctors took samples and sent them to the American University Hospital for analysis, but the tests were inconclusive because the lab asked for samples of the soil. Several people reported a yellow dust during Syrian state army attacks on Homs, impossible to verify when the Syrian government doesn’t allow inspectors to go on the ground and get samples. Moreover, that government has a record of tampering with evidence. Further, Syrian refugees rarely tell the whole truth, if they choose to talk at all. Most refuse to speak up because they’re afraid, others because they don’t trust foreigners, and others because they’re disappointed by the lack of aid, of medical care and even military assistance. Sometimes they even lie to ensure the safety of their families or to get more aid. However, instead of talking about the lack of access to vital evidence, del Ponte said she had suspicions that the rebels were using chemical weapons. From a career lawyer and a Swiss diplomat who has served as an ambassador to Argentina, this was highly irresponsible and revealed little knowledge about Syria.
|
|
|
