Equal before the law? Transitional justice in Syria

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1:27The Economist

1:34Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

1:44Today on the show, the next in our America at 250 series and a curious whiskey-making boom in China.

2:00But first...

2:14In a Damascus courtroom, an old man stands in a cage. He has a pained expression on his face. He's wearing a black and white prison uniform. Gareth Brown is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist. Atif Najib is on trial for murder, torture and orchestrating massacres.

2:4015 years ago, this man was the security chief of Dera, a city in southern Syria.

2:52When the parents of children arrested in protests in 2011 came to Mr Najib, who was head of security in the city at the time, to beg for mercy, he told them to forget about their sons, to go home and to make new ones. That brutal period in Dara morphed into nearly 14 years of nationwide repression, bloodshed and war.

3:18But on May 10th, the Syrian courts finally began to catch up with the criminals who ran Bashar al-Assad's regime. Artif Najib is the first man to take the stand. And so before we speak about this specific case, what does the justice system in Syria after the revolution now look like? Well, I think it's a judicial system in transition like the rest of the country. And essentially, there are two tracks. Last year, President Ahmed Shara announced this Transitional Justice Commission, which is a special body which was going to look at the idea of transitional justice, look at lessons from other conflicts, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, places like that, and try to develop a system, perhaps a special court for the Syrian context.

4:05So this was one track, and it was very much a more ideological, international human rights law-led process. However, the trials that have begun in the last few weeks are actually happening as a result of movements by the Syrian Ministry of Justice. And they're fundamentally based on the legal system that already existed in Syria prior to Assad's falling. Syria had 50 years of rule by Bashar al-Assad and before that his father, Hafez al-Assad. And really that has left the country with a judicial system that is not very well equipped to deal with these sorts of crimes. There is no crimes against humanity or war crimes on the Syrian statute book.

4:47Legislation around things like command responsibility and indirect responsibility for crimes is also quite weak. So they are being tried under essentially Syrian criminal law, and that makes it difficult to get them in court on some of the more serious crimes. So coming back then to the trial of Mr. Atif Najib, why is his trial so important here? There's a few reasons. One, he's a first cousin of Bashar al-Assad. He was captured in a raid in January 2025, and he's probably the most senior official from Bashar's regime currently in the custody of the new Syrian government. But I also think his involvement in Dera, which is a city where really the Syrian revolution and these protests that he is alleged to have repressed are what kick-started the whole revolution that turned into 15 years of civil war.

5:37So Atif Najib is the face of that very early, very callous repression. He's a name that every Syrian knows. So there's an element of symbolism. He wasn't the face of the regime, but he's inherently associated with that repression right at the beginning of the Syrian revolution. And how do you expect his trial to go? I mean, firstly, this is going to be a big media and public spectacle in Syria. Everyone is watching. If you go to the court on days when there are hearings, Hundreds of his alleged victims, their families, people who lost relatives in Deraa, are queuing up outside the court trying to get in.

6:13Nearly 18 months after the fall of Bashar, many people feel the government really hasn't done anything regarding transitional justice. But it's also an important test for the Syrian legal system. What is the legal basis for these trials? Is this going to be a kangaroo court with the sole aim of punishment and retribution? or can Syria and the Syrian government, the Transitional Justice Commission, demonstrate that they're capable of putting on a rigorous and fair trial in which the outcome can be sort of internationally lauded, but also accepted within the country, within Syria itself. One thing that's noticeable is the government's interpretation of transitional justice.

6:53Many people in Syria will say, look, every side has blood on its hands. Certainly members of Ahmed Adel Shara's own group and other armed factions that have supported him in the presidency are accused of pretty gross human rights violations and war crimes themselves. So in that sense, a trial that is designed to show the legitimacy of the justice system might fall short, at least in the eyes of Syrians who know that there is blood on the hands of both sides. Certainly, this is a double-edged sword for Shara. If you open the box of transitional justice too enthusiastically, it could swing back and it could hit your base, it could hit your closest associates.

7:30And I think beyond that, the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharah, has gone even further than that. And he's actually recruited some of the people who were part of the regime. Some senior figures have been brought into his government to help with particular things. So working on security, working with the Alawite community, working on international affairs. And that has angered people because some of these people are also closely associated with some of the worst crimes of the last 15 years. And all of this anger is not just an emotion or a sentiment, but you can see it bubbling up, especially in places outside of Damascus.

8:07Reprisal killings, sectarian attacks, people really taking the law into their own hands because their neighbour wronged them many years ago. And I think that is a key driver of why these trials are happening now. The government knows that if it isn't seen to be doing something about transitional justice, this kind of street level vengeance is only going to get worse and destabilize the country. And what about the international angle? There is a desire for legitimacy there too. How will these trials go ahead in the legal system you described that doesn't even have provisions for the crimes that are basically being alleged here?

8:42What the judges kind of leading this trial have said is that they are going to use international law and treaties to essentially plug in the gaps. So where they don't have laws that are appropriate on the statute book, they'll use things like the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute, and basically apply them as Syrian law. Now, when you speak to lawyers and legal experts, some are quite excited and some are quite nervous. There is a chance for the Syrian judicial system to do something really dynamic and really pioneering when it comes to trying some of these war crimes. But I think there's also this worry that the legal basis isn't that sound.

9:23But Syria's new friends in the international community are watching closely, particularly in Europe, in the US, Canada, places like that. And they don't want this to be a show trial. And the basis of Shara's new government, it's not democratic, but it is built on some form of legitimacy. And I think he knows that that legitimacy could be swayed one way or another, depending on whether these trials are seen as a success or a failure internationally. One thing that does come through when you speak to people involved in the trial is that they're not going to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

9:57Thanks very much for your time, Gareth. Thank you, Jason.

10:10I want to direct your attention to the latest episode of The Weekend Intelligence. My colleague Slavia Chankova had been struggling to breastfeed her daughter. So like the health correspondent she is, she went looking for answers in the latest research on human lactation. Problem was, there just isn't very much of it. That goes all the way back to the 1970s, a schism between advocates of the breast and those of the bottle. So for struggling mothers today, there's not much help to be had. That, at last, is changing as a handful of researchers try to uncover the mysteries of a baby's first food.

10:44Check out the Weekend Intelligence in the very same, um, feed where you found this episode.

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12:36As I may have mentioned before, July marks America's 250th birthday. We have been diving deep into our own archive to chart American history through the lens of the economists' coverage down the centuries. Today's historical window covers the Cold War, Vietnam, and a fractured America.

13:02And for the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, there's a new gleam of hope. At the end of the Second World War, two great powers eyed each other across a ruined Europe.

13:16Annie Crabill is a senior digital editor at The Economist. America and the Soviet Union, once allies, were now ideological rivals. The Cold War had begun.

13:35The Soviet Union consolidated its grip on Eastern Europe. And in 1949, it tested an atomic bomb. That opened a new kind of conflict. Ideological and global, but without direct fighting. Because of mutually assured destruction. New proxy wars began on the Korean Peninsula and then in Vietnam. as America resisted Soviet expansion and tried to push a liberal order abroad.

14:12Back home, the civil rights movement was picking up pace. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools denied Black Americans equal treatment. It was the first blow to the Jim Crow era. The Economist supported the move. This decision strikes at the root of racial prejudice. The next year, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion... The first televised presidential debate in 1960 saw a youthful, smiling John F.

15:00Kennedy pitted against a tired-looking, sweaty Richard Nixon. Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected president, and his brief time in office was a triumph in image-making, beginning with his inaugural address. Ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. Even in his first week, President Kennedy set a new tone of urgency. The Economist said at the time, Panache and joie de vivre are the only words to describe the style with which President Kennedy has stepped, vaulted is a better word, into his august office. His years in office were shaped by Cuba. In his first year, he botched an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

15:50But in 1962, he managed the Cuban Missile Crisis with deft diplomacy. From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Kennedy died by assassination in 1963, an almost mythical figure with a sense of promise unfulfilled. In oasis of freedom and justice, I have a dream. In the same year, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his now-famous speech. We'll one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream... Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in 1964, which officially ended segregation in public places.

16:44King kept campaigning for economic justice for poor Americans of all races. But he, too, was assassinated in 1968.

16:59Meanwhile, the Cold War continued, even in space. — That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. On July 20, 1969, America set down two astronauts on the moon. It was a remarkable feat, and it marked the beginning of the space age.

17:31America's involvement in Vietnam was a continuation of the ideological battle against communist expansion. But we will not surrender. And we will not retreat. Lyndon Johnson escalated the conflict. So that by the end of 1969, there were more than half a million troops in Vietnam. But as the war there grew, so too did opposition to it. Anti-war protests attracted millions of Americans. America's conventional superiority proved ill-suited to a guerrilla war. The war fought to save Vietnam devastated it. In the end, America withdrew. The Economist reported, The Vietnam War ended at 10 o 'clock on Wednesday morning, not with a bang, but with a crumple.

18:32The victors seem to have made no attempt to organize an uprising in the city to greet them. The communist supporters cheered the arriving troops, but the accounts of Western reporters suggest that most people watched them in silence. Having lost more than 58 ,000 soldiers and contributed to the death of one million Vietnamese, America was left questioning its power, purpose, and liberal values.

19:09War by Edwin Starr powerfully captured the mood of the Vietnam generation. This anti-war feeling became the heart of a counterculture that rejected authority and hierarchy. Instead, it embraced personal liberation, sexual, spiritual, and psychological.

19:35Many older Americans were repulsed by this. And twice they elected Richard Nixon, who promised to restore law and order. before himself being forced to resign in 1974 for his role in the Watergate scandal. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions. The majority in cases from Texas... Roe v. Wade was the bookend of a historic progressive era for the Supreme Court. The ruling was a triumph for feminist politics. But it also prompted a huge backlash, fueling the rise of a Christian conservative movement determined to overturn the decision.

20:25And we are very earnestly convicted. The religious right, once an upstart. That unless America has a spiritual visitation. Was quickly on the ascendant. We shall cease to enjoy the liberties and the freedoms that we have for 200 years enjoyed.

20:48We'll see you back next time for our next chapter, Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Backlash.

21:10Jason, I see you got something there. What are you unboxing? I have been provided by my producer with a bottle of Gua Long blended whiskey. Fine quality, aged in oak cask, Hunan, China. Wow, a Hunan whiskey. I have not had one from Hunan yet, so I'm really interested to hear what you think about this. Well, I think, first of all, that it is 11 in the morning and that I suffer for my art. But in the interests of good journalism, Now, for those who don't know, Don Weiland is the Economist China Business and Finance Editor, and he's the one who's been looking into whiskey. But I am trying to, in a gonzo journalism way, join in the reporting.