Episode 4 Raji Abdul Salam On Turning Records Into Evidence

In this episode, Dr Ulrike Lühe speaks with Raji Abdul Salam, Chief Legal Data Archive Analyst at the Reckoning Project. In this conversation, Raji reveals how analysing thousands of testimonies uncovered the systematic genocide against Yazidi people—patterns invisible in individual cases. The conversation explores why "immutability" is sacred in digital evidence, how AI both accelerates and threatens documentation work, and a provocative question: with unlimited storage capacity, should we archive everything? "I always trust the archive that has a methodology," Raji argues. "But I don't trust the people who manage it."

About: Raji Abdul Salam is Chief Legal Data Archive Analyst at the Reckoning Project, with extensive experience documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine, including building legal cases under universal jurisdiction.

More information: The Reckoning Project

The 3-part series "Can the record be trusted?" explores the prospects and challenges of human rights documentation and archives in the digital age, with speakers from an international expert workshop that took place at Queens University Belfast in November 2024.