After condemnation of the horror in Houla, Assad has reason to be worried

The horror of Houla, condemned unanimously by the United Nations Security Council, is today resonating around the world.  The small town, near Homs, is a new place-name in the global lexicon of bloodbaths by ruthless regimes.  Branded an unspeakable crime of inhuman brutality, it’s a game-changer, many commentators are saying.

The chilling images of 49 tiny, white-shrouded bodies, lined up in Houla’s Ali bin Al Hussein Mosque for all the world to see, may yet come to define the tyranny of Bashar al-Assad.  For those of us who have covered the grim and bloody twists and turns of 15 months of revolt, the killings certainly plumb new depths of depravity.

The Syrian uprising has already cost more than 10,000 civilian lives, with tens of thousands more arrested and tortured.  Now that Houla has happened, it seems there is little now standing in the way of the complete polarisation of Syrian society: for all involved, on both sides, it’s do or die.  Each has everything to lose.

At the UN, the Syrian regime dismissed the accusations that its forces were to blame for the Houla Massacre as “a tsunami of lies.” But it’s Syria’s 15-month-long attempt to deceive the world that has now been so spectacularly exposed; even Russia and China have been forced to abandon al-Assad.

Revenge attack

Houla is being explained as a revenge attack by the regime’s ‘shabiha’ militia. But what it illustrates is the disconnectedness of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President, who has repeatedly denied any role in the killings, but, in the view of experts in international law, bears criminal responsibility for the horrors being unleashed on his people.

In making the Dispatches documentary The Real Mr and Mrs Assad (to be broadcast after Channel 4 News, at 8pm tonight) I have watched footage not seen in Britain before, of Bashar al-Assad and his London-born wife Asma, relaxing and joking as they drive around Damascus and laughingly recall jaunts to the seaside with their children. That was back in 2009, when neither Assad probably had any inkling of what lay ahead.

The contrast between this fly-on-the-wall footage and what’s happened in Houla is breathtaking. You cannot help wondering what Asma al-Assad must now be thinking.  This is a woman who had helped her husband present himself as the face of reform and modernity. She set up and worked with charities devoted to helping disadvantaged Syrian children.

The West saw what they wanted to see in Bashar al-Assad and left it too late to do anything to stop him.  They were duped by a man who promised reform but has ended up digging in, interested only in clinging onto power – whatever the cost.

Experts in international law consider it “preposterous and completely implausible” that Assad himself would be unaware of the systematic and widespread killing and torture.  The Dispatches investigation reveals new evidence implicating top commanders, clansmen and henchmen of the Syrian president himself, making his future prosecution on charges of crimes against humanity a realistic prospect, according to legal experts.

William Schabas, Professor of international criminal law at Middlesex University, says that while there is no “smoking gun” linking President Assad directly to the commission of crimes, he can be held to account using the doctrine of command responsibility.

“We can hold him responsible,” Schabus says, “even if we can’t prove that he actually ordered the crimes. Whether he is a micro-manager of atrocity, or whether he’s a macro-manager, it doesn’t actually make much difference.

“Hitler was a macro-manager. There is very little evidence of Hitler ordering direct atrocities to be perpetrated. Does anyone have any doubt that Hitler wasn’t in charge? I don’t think so. And I think that this is a similar case.”

‘Kill quotas’

Defectors from Syrian intelligence and security agencies, used by the regime to crush the 14-month-long revolt, told Dispatches that the President’s cousin issued “shoot-to-kill” orders against civilian protestors in Deraa, the cradle of the insurrection, in April last year. “Kill quotas” were reportedly issued to snipers tasked with assassinating pro-democracy activists.

It is also alleged that Assad’s brother Maher, a senior army commander, was among senior figures operating out of a secret command centre in Deraa when orders were issued to contain a protest march by all means necessary. More than 100 civilians were shot dead. Maher is also accused of ordering the indiscriminate mass-punishment of the entire male population of a troublesome town, al-Moudamya, later the same month.

In the 2009 footage, the President, makes a remark to camera which will doubtless come back to haunt him – and I can see, in my mind’s eye, being replayed in The Hague a few years hence. “Every mistake [that] happens in this government, you are responsible,” he says, candidly.  “Not somebody else. Not the minister. Not the Prime Minister. At the end you should be responsible.” He was clearly referring to himself.

“No one is authorised to give orders to the security forces except for him,” says exiled former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam, who fell out with Assad in 2005, having served under both him and his father. Speaking in Paris, where he now lives, Khaddam says: “Will anyone believe that 300,000 soldiers can come out of their barracks to slaughter citizens due to an initiative by their officers? These orders are issued by the President of the state.”

Any future prosecution of Assad on charges of crimes against humanity must be unanimously referred by the United National Security Council to the International Criminal Court – as happened in the case of Libya, last year. Until last night, that was considered unlikely, owing to Russia’s and China’s persistent blocking vetoes. In the wake of last night’s unanimous condemnation of the regime’s brutality, Assad has reason to be worried.

“We will do everything within our power,” says Foreign Office Minister, Alistair Burt.  “We have seen former leaders of regimes in the ICC already, so no one can discount the possibility that it may well happen and if you were Bashar al-Assad, you would not bet that it would not happen to you.”

You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @millerc4