The head of UN investigators on Syria, who are working to gather evidence of atrocities committed in the country, said today that he has sought authorization from the country’s new leadership to begin his work in the field.

After investigations carried out so far remotely, “hundreds of detention centers have been documented (…) Every security center, every military base, every prison had its own place of detention or mass grave“, confirmed Robert Petit, the head of the international independent mechanism “IIIM” – a group of experts, established by a UN decision in 2016 to investigate crimes in Syria.

“It will take a long time to know the full extent“, he told AFP.

The Geneva-based MIII is responsible for assisting in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Syria since the war began in 2011.

These UN investigators were never authorized by Damascus to go to Syria.

Robert Petty said his team asked the new authorities “permission to come here and begin discussing a framework for carrying out our mandate».

“We had a productive meeting and formally requested (…) to be able to return and start work, we await their response,” continued this Canadian prosecutor and jurist.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), more than 100,000 people have died in former Syrian government prisons since 2011.

Since the prisons opened after the fall of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, there have been many fears about the preservation of documents and other evidence of crimes.

For Petit in Syria there is “enough evidence (…) to convict those who should be prosecuted”, but their preservation “it will require a great deal of coordination from all sides».