The 2017 videos are unbearable. They show men in uniform hitting a man lying on the ground with a sledgehammer. And shoot him as he writhes bleeding. The men speak Russian. They laugh. Rock music is booming in the background.
–
The horror continues: the men stab their victim with knives. One tries to sever his head from the man’s torso with a spade. When the victim is finally beheaded, they pour liquid over the body and joke about a “barbecue”. A little later the body burns. The alleged perpetrators pose with the severed head.
–
Criminal charges filed against alleged perpetrators
The photos were taken in northern Syria, probably near the Al Shaer gas field. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published it between 2019 and 2020.
Journalists have now been able to identify at least one, probably even several of the perpetrators. He is a member of the Russian mercenary troop Wagner, which is deployed in the Ukraine, Libya and Syria, among others. The victim has also presumably been identified: survivors recognized their relative Mohamad A., a young Syrian who had recently been forcibly conscripted into the army and wanted to desert.
–
The victim’s relatives now demand justice. According to SPIEGEL information, they filed criminal charges against the alleged perpetrators last week. Their goal: The Russian judiciary should bring the mercenaries sent by the Russian state to account.
Collected material for months
The criminal complaint against at least one member of the Wagner group for murder and torture is the first of its kind. Previously, journalists from Novaya Gazeta had called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted. The advertisement is supported by several international organizations: the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the French Fédération Internationale der Ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH) and the Moscow Memorial Foundation.
–
According to their own account, the organizations collected material for the criminal complaint for months and handed over “sufficient evidence” to the Russian authorities to “bring the suspects involved to justice.”
“The Russian government must recognize its legal and moral responsibility,” says SCM founder Mazen Darwish. This applies to both the army and members of private mercenary companies. One could not “regard Syrian blood as cheap”.
There are numerous reports of torture and murder of civilians around the deployment of Russian mercenaries in Syria. Most of them are attributed to members of the Wagner group. The mercenary force is controlled by the controversial Russian entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin. He is also known as “Putin’s cook”.
–
Last year the European Union frozen Prigozhin’s accounts in the EU and banned him from entering the country. When SPIEGEL once confronted him about the activities of his mercenary companies, he replied that he had repeatedly recommended the journalists of the news magazine “to fuck themselves.”
Indeed, the chances of prosecution of the Syrian case in the empire of Russian President Vladimir Putin are unlikely to be. The Kremlin has no interest in holding the mercenaries sent from Moscow responsible.
The initiators of the complaint are already threatening that they will “pursue all legal possibilities until we get justice”.
–
