美国国家公共电台 NPR With Syria's War Nearly Over, Victims Take The Battle To European Courts

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Syria's president, Bashar Assad, and his regime seem poised¹ to stay in power as they retake more and more of the country after seven years of bloody² civil war. This will make it hard to hold the regime or its commanders accountable for well-documented and widespread accusations³ of murder and torture. But a methodical network of activists⁴ and victims has compiled the evidence, and NPR's Deborah Amos reports, they are still hoping for justice.

DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE⁵: We begin this story a long way from Syria. We begin in Washington, at the Holocaust⁶ Museum. This exhibit is called, "Syria: Please Don't Forget Us." This is one part of the war crime story.

JOHN GUTOWSKY: I thought was very moving. I wasn't aware of some of the things that are happening there, obviously. This is eye-opening.

AMOS: John Gutowsky is visiting from Atlanta. Carolyn Ramey is from Richmond.

CAROLYN RAMEY: I'm very troubled and in prayer a great deal.

AMOS: What is troubling, grisly images of battered⁷ and emaciated⁸ bodies. These are torture victims, part of a collection of more than 50,000 images smuggled⁹ out of Syria by a former police officer-turned-defector code named Caesar. In addition, there are five scraps¹⁰ of cloth with the names of 82 prisoners, opponents of the Syrian regime, written in a mixture of blood and rust¹¹. Syrian journalist Mansour al-Omari spent 18 months in a secret government cell. He smuggled out the records of his cellmates, most no longer alive. He now lives in exile in Europe and spoke¹² via Skype.

MANSOUR AL-OMARI: In this exhibition, I took this story from under the ground, from darkness to lightness. My main goal, we can still fight back and provide information.

AMOS: This is part of a trove¹³ of evidence that could prove charges of war crimes.

STEPHEN RAPP: Tens of thousands. At least 50,000 people have been tortured to death in their prisons.

AMOS: You mean up-close kind of murder?

RAPP: Yeah. Up-close murder, tortured to death.

AMOS: That's Stephen Rapp, head of the State Department's Office of Global Criminal Justice until 2015. In June, a German court issued a landmark¹⁴ decision says, Rapp - an international arrest warrant against a key official in the Assad regime, Jamil Hassan, head of Air Force Intelligence Directorate accused of overseeing torture and murder. Torture on an industrial scale, says Rapp. He hopes this first warrant shows Syrian leaders they, too, could face consequences.

RAPP: Their hope of visiting their money in the West, of meeting with family members, is gone. And I think that does begin to have an impact, and those that have committed these horrible crimes will never be able to live normally for the rest of their lives.

AMOS: For the victims, German courts are the last hope for justice after Russia and China blocked a Syrian tribunal at the U.N. Crucially, Germany allows a judicial¹⁵ process to begin without the victim being a citizen, explains Scott Gilmore, a Washington-based attorney with the Center for Justice and Accountability.

SCOTT GILMORE: It's a local crime, I mean, a crime occurring in the basement of a Syrian detention¹⁶ center. It's a local crime with a global impact. These types of war crimes, because of our interconnected world, because of technology, because of flows of migrants, they affect everyone.

AMOS: In particular, in Germany. Now a hub of the Syrian diaspora, many refugees witnessed wartime atrocities¹⁷.

GILMORE: What led to the issuance of this arrest warrant was a concerted effort between Syrian lawyers living in exile, working with international human rights organizations to compile evidence.

AMOS: So far, four more cases in Germany and one in an Austrian court.

GILMORE: I think what you're seeing now is the second wave of the civil society striking back. And they're striking back from exile with global partners.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in foreign language).

AMOS: The early days of the Syrian revolt began as peaceful protests. Then the Assad regime focused the brunt of the crackdown on civil society. Thousands were swept into Syrian jails, deaths documented in the Caesar photos. Syrian activists posted the images on Facebook, where Noura Ghazi, a Syrian lawyer now in Lebanon, recognized some of the battered faces.

NOURA GHAZI: It's very ugly. It's very hard. And I found many of my friends there.

AMOS: She got another shock recently when hundreds of Syrian families learned about missing relatives. Syrian officials had quietly updated official registries. Ghazi learned that her missing husband was executed within days of his arrest in 2015. Sometimes, she says, the grief is so overwhelming, it's hard to get out of bed. But the campaign to bring the top torturers to justice is some relief.

GHAZI: We don't mind the long time. We know. But at least we need this hope that we can reach that justice. Maybe the second generation. Maybe not us. But we just need this hope.

AMOS: The war in Syria is winding¹⁸ down, she says. The battle in the courts is just beginning. Deborah Amos, NPR News.

[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the audio of this story, as in a previous Web version, we incorrectly say that Mansour al-Omari spent 18 months in jail. He spent a total of 356 days.]

1 poised   

a.摆好姿势不动的

参考例句：

• The hawk poised in mid-air ready to swoop. 老鹰在半空中盘旋，准备俯冲。
• Tina was tense, her hand poised over the telephone. 蒂娜心情紧张，手悬在电话机上。

2 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

3 accusations   

n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名

参考例句：

• There were accusations of plagiarism. 曾有过关于剽窃的指控。
• He remained unruffled by their accusations. 对于他们的指控他处之泰然。

4 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

7 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。

8 emaciated   

adj.衰弱的，消瘦的

参考例句：

• A long time illness made him sallow and emaciated.长期患病使他面黄肌瘦。
• In the light of a single candle,she can see his emaciated face.借着烛光，她能看到他的被憔悴的面孔。

9 smuggled   

水货

参考例句：

• The customs officer confiscated the smuggled goods. 海关官员没收了走私品。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Those smuggled goods have been detained by the port office. 那些走私货物被港务局扣押了。 来自互联网

10 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

11 rust   

n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退

参考例句：

• She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
• The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。

12 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

13 trove   

n.被发现的东西，收藏的东西

参考例句：

• He assembled a rich trove of Chinese porcelain.他收集了一批中国瓷器。
• The gallery is a treasure trove of medieval art.这个画廊是中世纪艺术的宝库。

14 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

15 judicial   

adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的

参考例句：

• He is a man with a judicial mind.他是个公正的人。
• Tom takes judicial proceedings against his father.汤姆对他的父亲正式提出诉讼。

16 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

17 atrocities   

n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪

参考例句：

• They were guilty of the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. 他们犯有最野蛮、最灭绝人性的残暴罪行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The enemy's atrocities made one boil with anger. 敌人的暴行令人发指。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

18 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。