Syria 1st-Hand: Opposition Tries to Implement Justice Through Courts in Aleppo (Chick)

Insurgent in Aleppo (Manu Brabo/AP)Kristen Chick writes for the Christian Science Monitor:

Mahad Youssef walks into this bare, new office, sinks into a chair, and holds her head in her hands. Her two adult daughters stand beside her, arms crossed and looking worried, as Mrs. Youssef tearfully petitions the man in the pressed suit sitting behind a desk.

"I swear on the Quran, my son did nothing," she says. "My son is a good man. If he confessed anything, it's because they are torturing him."

This, the newest court in Aleppo, is her last hope to get her son back. And perhaps the slump in her shoulders is an indication of her confidence in its abilities.

Ms. Youssef's son was recently arrested by a brigade of the Free Syrian Army, who accused him of being a member of the shabiha, or a thug working for the Assad regime. They were detaining him, and, she is afraid, torturing him. The judge, who sits behind his desk, waves to a court investigator, who enters the room and informs the woman that he visited the brigade that captured her son, and they promised to turn him over to the court tomorrow. Youssef begins to cry.

"I swear on the Quran, I swear on the Quran, my son is innocent!" she cries.

This newly established United Legal Council of Aleppo is an attempt to bring law and order back to war-torn Aleppo, where rebels and the Syrian regime have fought over the city for three months now. In rebel-held territory, the citizens who haven't fled the fighting find themselves with no courts to perform marriages or try thieves, and at the mercy of the armed rebel groups fighting the regime.

But this group of lawyers and judges is finding it difficult to exert civilian accountability over the rebel groups, whose guns are the law.

"In times of war, justice suffers first," says Abu Ibrahim, the judge who heard Youssef's petition. A judge in a government appeals court before the uprising, he asked not to use his real name because his family lives in an area under the control of the Syrian regime.

The court was established one month ago by a group of about 50 former lawyers and judges. Many of the rebel groups fighting in Aleppo already had their own informal courts, usually based on sharia or Islamic law. Abu Ibrahim says this court is an attempt to build a unified system to apply justice, both for civilians and fighters.

He and the other council members met with the leaders of the various rebel groups to secure their promise that they would cooperate with the new court, to give it legitimacy. Most of them have agreed, he says, with a few holdouts.

But even among those that have nominally agreed, it's not clear how much those words are worth. The judicial council works in an edifice built before the war and never used. The bare walls and floors echo with the voices of the people who fill a hallway, waiting to make their complaints. Downstairs in the basement, several rooms prepared as prisons sit empty, waiting for the rebels to turn over their prisoners to the legal council. Only one cell is occupied, by just two prisoners.

Some rebel groups have been accused of atrocities while battling the regime. This week, a video became public of rebel fighters executing a group of apparent regime soldiers, apparently near the northern town of Saraqeb, where heavy fighting had taken place. Human rights groups say the actions in the video, if verified, may represent a war crime.

Such battlefield crimes are unlikely to make it to this court. But what Abu Ibrahim hopes it can do, at the least, is bring accountability to the interactions between the armed groups and civilians, as well as handle civilian complaints. He hopes it will become the foundation of a civilian infrastructure that can supersede the control of the rebel groups.

The legal council hears about 15 new cases a day, says Abu Ibrahim. It has recognized marriages and divorces and mediated family disputes. There have been many cases of theft, but in each case the council has ordered the thieves to return what they stole, and has declined to punish them because of the difficult circumstances of war.

In fact, the council has yet to punish anyone. That's partly because it has little power to enforce its rulings, or to force an armed group to turn over prisoners.

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