Carla Del Ponte: The Netherlands is Possibly Complicit in War Crimes in Syria

Article is from trouw.nl and translated from Dutch by Google

It nicely complements the previous article on this blog 

Ghassan Dahhan and Milena Holdert 

The Swiss lawyer Carla Del Ponte. She was a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry for Syria until last year. © ANP

Carla Del Ponte is 'shocked' that the Netherlands provided support to combat groups known to violate human rights. 

The Swiss is former chief prosecutor of the Yugoslavia Tribunal and until last year was a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry for Syria. "All parties in the conflict commit crimes. The Netherlands knows that the opposition is committing war crimes. "

"All parties in the conflict commit crimes.

The Netherlands knows that the opposition is committing war crimes. "

Carla Del Ponte, UN Commission of Inquiry for Syria

Del Ponte responds to the results of research by Trouw and Nieuwsuur about  the support to the Syrian armed opposition. She reported from 2012 to 2017 on behalf of the United Nations on war crimes and human rights violations in Syria, not only by the regime of President Assad, but also by armed opposition groups. "We wrote in our reports from 2013 that all conflict groups in the Syrian conflict were guilty of war crimes," said Del Ponte.

The Netherlands had a seat in the UN Human Rights Council from 2015 to 2017, which included the Del Ponte committee. Del Ponte remembers the Dutch ambassador Karel van Oosterom. "He knew exactly what was in our reports, he even knew the details of the research," said Del Ponte. And, she adds: "The Netherlands had enough people, and information from the intelligence services. And certainly the Netherlands, and the other European countries, because they exchange all this information. So they know exactly what happened in Syria! "

The decision of the Netherlands in 2015 to provide support surprises Del Ponte. "Why did the Netherlands do this? The Netherlands could have done enough to send humanitarian aid through the United Nations? "She pleads for an international tribunal that investigates war crimes in Syria and also needs to examine the interference of countries such as the Netherlands. "Thorough research is needed. Not only the Netherlands, but also other states have supported the Syrian war. They could be complicit in committing war crimes. "

In reports that Del Ponte's commission drew up, the Sultan Murad Brigade is explicitly mentioned. That is  one of the groups of  which research by Trouw and Nieuwsuur shows that they have had help from the Netherlands. According to Del Ponte's research, this group would suppress the inhabitants of Aleppo. The Netherlands supported the Sultan Murad brigade from 2016, and continued the support until the beginning of 2018. Even after the publication of Del Ponte's alarming report.

Great doubts

Both the EU and the UN always had serious doubts about support for Syrian rebel groups. Other EU countries decided not to provide this support, including Austria. The then Austrian foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger (OVP), vetoed when France and Britain wanted to supply weapons and logistics equipment to the Syrian armed opposition from an EU perspective. He had strong doubts about the so-called 'moderate armed opposition', which according to him regularly changed leadership and had no clear structure. And besides, he says to Trouw and Nieuwsuur: 'We as Austria felt that you should not simply join forces in one side of the conflict. We did not want to send weapons and equipment to the Syrian opposition while we did not know exactly who these people were."

A good and moral decision by Austria. Unfortunately, their moral character seems to be out of place among the western powers that seem willing to support anyone who will fight against Assad.

Spindleegger already questioned the 'moderate' nature of the insurgents at the time, which included support from the US. 'It was quite possible that the weapons and equipment that you sent to these groups could ultimately be used against Europeans themselves.' Spindelegger calls the qualification 'non-lethal material' a 'gray area'. Pick-up trucks that are used to transport weapons or even to assemble are difficult to separate from weapons themselves in practice.