The head of the United Nations agency tasked with examining allegations of human rights abuses under the dictatorship of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stated he has reached out to the country’s interim government to request permission to begin an investigation.
"Our first priority would be to go and try and scope the extent of the issue, see exactly what is available in terms of access and potential evidence, and then see how we could best assist in preserving that," said Robert Petit, director of the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism, during a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
"There is now the possibility of accessing evidence of the highest level of the regime," the ex-Canadian prosecutor added.
Petit’s comments follow the December 8 overthrow of al-Assad by cooperating opposition militias, marking the end of his family’s 53-year autocratic reign in the Middle Eastern country.
The successor administration, led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, announced last week plans to prosecute those responsible for the widespread persecution of Syria’s dissidents and political prisoners.
The IIIM was established in 2016 to identify serious crimes carried out by al-Assad’s internal security forces since the beginning of the 2011 Syrian Civil War.
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