Episode 3: Robert Petit – Managing Evidence For Future Accountability In Syria

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. 

In this episode, Dagmar Hovestädt speaks with Robert Petit, a long-term prosecutor of international crimes - from the Rwanda Tribunal to Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor – and current head of the UN-mandated International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) dealing with crimes under International Law in Syria since March 2011. Only weeks after the recording of this conversation, the Assad regime fell, changing some aspects of the mechanism’s mandate but keeping its core untouched.  

Created by the UN General Assembly in 2016 after repeated attempts to refer Syria to the ICC were vetoed, the IIIM has a unique mandate: to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of serious crimes under International Law committed in Syria since March 2011 – not for its own legal activities, but in the service of current and future legal accountability measures. 

Robert explains how the IIIM uses criminal law standards, rigorous authentication protocols and complex information management systems to build a long-term repository. It sources its information from documents and data from civil society organizations and international bodies. The IIIM generates additional evidence through witness statements and the analysis of provided documentation, all of which is only accessible to competent jurisdictions. The material collected by the IIIM has already supported 210 distinct investigations across 16 jurisdictions.    

About: Robert Petit is the head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM). He previously served as International Co-Prosecutor at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Senior Trial Attorney at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and began his international career at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1996.  

More information: IIIM