How Facebook Failed in Syria

In October 2020, in the wake of the decapitation of the French high school teacher Samuel Paty, a Syrian user took to Facebook to praise the brutal murder. After SJAC staff reported the post, Facebook’s technology assessed whether it “goes against our Community Standards” and informed us that it did not. The post, and the […]

Inside the Raslan Trial: Guards played the music of Fayrouz amidst the sound of beatings

TRIAL OF ANWAR RASLAN and EYAD AL GHARIB Higher Regional Court – Koblenz, Germany Trial Monitoring Report 14 Hearing dates of October 01, 2020 A full PDF of the report can be found here.     CAUTION: Some testimony includes descriptions of torture.   Summary / Highlights:[1] P16, a 38-year-old woman, testified about her detention and interrogations […]

Inside the Raslan Trial: Notes of Compassion from Raslan and SCM’s Director Testifies

  TRIAL OF ANWAR RASLAN and EYAD AL GHARIB Higher Regional Court – Koblenz, Germany Trial Monitoring Report 13 Hearing Dates: September 15 & 16, 2020 A full PDF of the report can be found here.    CAUTION: Some testimony includes descriptions of torture. Summaries/Highlights:[1] Trial Day 32 – September 15, 2020 Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Center for […]

SJAC Shares New Human Rights Training in Arabic

  For more than 9 years, Syrian activists and human rights groups have collected documentation and evidence on violations of human rights and international law in Syria. This documentation is vital to the success of justice processes, but in order to be usable it needs to meet international quality standards.  However, many of the human […]

Glossary – Essential Terms for Understanding the Koblenz Trial

Glossary Essential Terms for Understanding the Koblenz Trial A PDF of this resource is available here. German English Definition Angeklagter defendant A defendant is an accused person or indicted accused in respect of whom a decision has been taken to open the main criminal proceedings (§ 157 alternative 2 StPO[1]).Anwar Raslan and Eyad Al-Gharib are […]

Inside the Raslan Trial: State Secrets and Mass Graves

TRIAL OF ANWAR RASLAN and EYAD AL GHARIB Higher Regional Court – Koblenz, Germany Trial Monitoring Report 12 Hearing dates of September 9 and 10, 2020 Full PDF of the report can be found here. CAUTION: Some testimony includes descriptions of torture. Summary / Highlights:[1] Trial Day 30 – September 9 P14, a 55-year-old man, testified […]

Inside the Raslan Trial: Al-Gharib’s arrest ends at a health clinic

TRIAL OF ANWAR RASLAN and EYAD AL-GHARIB Higher Regional Court – Koblenz, Germany Trial Monitoring Report 11 Hearing Dates: September 2-3, 2020[1] Full PDF of the report can be found here. CAUTION: Some testimony includes descriptions of torture.  Summary / Highlights: Trial Day 28 – September 2, 2020 Manuel Deußing, an inspector for the German […]

Bayanat: SJAC’s New Open-Source Database

Social media data has the power to hold human rights violators accountable and to help victims’ families identify their loved ones. Likewise, the advent of the citizen-journalist has strengthened human rights documentation. However, organizations’ and individuals’ limited resources, government suppression, and social media algorithms threaten the essential preservation of this data. To address this gap, […]

Justice and Accountability drowned in “Operation White Milk”

In mid-November, Austrian media shed light on a scandal involving Austrian authorities and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Leaked documents from, Austria’s national intelligence service (BVT) (the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Fight against Terrorism), reveal that the BVT made a deal, so-called “Operation White Milk,” with the Israeli Mossad by agreeing to […]

Consideration of a “Pooled Jurisdiction” Tribunal for Syria

The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) has initiated a discussion with Syrian civil society groups about the creation of a Nuremberg-like tribunal for the prosecution of Syrian war criminals. While SJAC is generally supportive of all efforts that could bring a measure of justice and accountability for the atrocities committed in Syria since 2011, there […]