(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Investigators and lawyers said Wednesday that they have built war crimes cases against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and key institutions of his regime with documents smuggled out of the country.
The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) has already built three cases against the regime for crimes against humanity and is continuing to assemble evidence against others in the regime as well as in the opposition.
The CIJA said in an email that the cases, first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, were largely based on government documents smuggled out of Syria by a team of 50 investigators who had risked their lives to collect the evidence that now runs to around half a million pages.
The group is also building up possible war crimes cases against rebel groups fighting Assad, including extremist ones, and has hired staff to review hours of video evidence.
So far, the CIJA has compiled three cases against the regime based mostly on its bloody suppression of anti-government protests in 2011 that triggered the descent into civil war.
The first case centres on Assad and his war cabinet - the Central Crisis Management Cell (CCMC).
A second focuses on the National Security Bureau, which includes the intelligence and security chiefs.
The third involves the security committee responsible for Deir Ezzor and Raqa provinces, and is based on smuggled documents detailing "how precise orders to crush the popular uprising flowed from Damascus to the governorates."
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