International law and moral principles are against
collective punishment. One cannot punish the people for the crimes perpetrated
by some of their leaders. Even in matters of war crimes and related offenses,
the responsibility cannot be attributed to a group of leaders. It has to be
linked to the individual responsibilities of each one of them, taking into
account that there are different degrees of responsibility that call for
different types of sentences. That’s why I think it is important to underline
the following paragraph in Baroness Ashton’s statement of yesterday on the
situation in Syria:
“The EU recalls the individual
responsibility of the perpetrators of attacks of this type, who must be held
accountable, and the role of the ICC in investigating and judging such acts.”
I wrote something similar in my weekly column of Visao, two
or three days ago. But I went further. The UN Security Council has the duty to
refer the chemical attacks to the International Criminal Court for
investigation. It will be the Court that will decide on who should be in the
list of suspects and then proceed against each one of them.
This is the way forward.
It can, of course, be combined with a political process. And
it should.
They are both missing. The ICC and the political process.
Some of us continue to prefer action to justice and
imagination. Yes, imagination, because a political process in the case of Syria
is above all an exercise extremely demanding in terms of creativity.
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