Unless justice is served and crime perpetrators prosecuted, a sustainable and inclusive peace could not be achieved in Syria, Kuwait said.
The remark was made by Kuwait’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Mansour AlOtaibi late Tuesday, during a UN General Assembly session on International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under International Law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011.
It is more commonly referred to as “the Mechanism”, or “IIIM”. “As the crisis enters its ninth year, the absence of accountability for those who committed crimes in Syria since March 2011 continues,” he pointed out.
He further said that some of those heinous acts could live up to the status of “war crimes”, or “crimes against humanity”, including the ones of alleged use of internationallybanned chemical weapons. Kuwait, out of its global and moral beliefs, had adopted the establishment of IIIM, even voluntarily contributing to the Mechanism’s financial budget, AlOtaibi noted.
The only solution to the Syrian crisis could only be a peaceful one, based on the execution of UNSC resolution 2254 and the Geneva II Conference on Syria 2012, he concluded.
The IIIM is neither a prosecutor’s office nor a court, but collects and analyses information and evidence of international crimes committed in Syria to assist criminal proceedings in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes.
Source: KUNA
