Evidence gains entry but not a verdict
Published 10 October 2026
A UN report dated February 23 reviewed the IIIM's first full reporting year after Assad's fall, ending January 31. It described direct engagement with new Syrian institutions as a change from the previous operating environment. Officials of the Justice and Foreign Affairs ministries, the transitional justice commission and the missing-persons commission met the mechanism. These contacts created possibilities for cooperation inside Syria that had been unavailable for years. Access changed what could be collected and whom the team could meet. It did not turn the mechanism into a Syrian court or allow it to pronounce verdicts. Its purpose remained supporting competent jurisdictions with preserved and analysed evidence. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The IIIM sought permission in May 2025 to establish a Damascus field office. At the report's cutoff, that request remained unanswered. A proposal for a liaison officer was pending too. Missions continued through individual approvals. Government cooperation could therefore be substantial without a permanent operational arrangement. The report thanked the authorities for facilitating evidence collection while preserving this limit. It described neither complete obstruction nor unrestricted institutional presence. That middle condition affected continuity: staff could visit and carry out tasks, but durable access still depended on arrangements not finalized. A government's willingness to receive a delegation did not establish that all needed archives, sites and witnesses were permanently accessible. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The missing-persons task overlapped with criminal accountability without becoming identical to it. In May 2025, the mechanism signed an arrangement with the separate Independent Institution on Missing Persons. It identified records concerning missing people and graves and developed ways to match distinctive information across sources. Sharing remained subject to consent. A family seeking a relative's fate did not necessarily need to wait for a criminal conviction, while prosecutors could benefit from evidence identifying the same person. The report distinguished those objectives and sought cooperation between them. The right to know could be advanced alongside a trial process without reducing one to a preliminary stage of the other. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The report said the national legal framework was still incomplete. The assembly had not yet been fully established, and a draft transitional justice law remained under review. Existing criminal and procedural codes did not expressly cover the full range of international crimes, while capital punishment remained available. The country therefore had institutions announcing accountability before the corresponding legal architecture was finished. That could constrain what charges were brought, how evidence was used and which cases an external body could support. The mechanism's report described the problem at the end of January; later claims of legislative progress require later evidence rather than treating a planned law as already effective. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
National proceedings had begun to develop, but the mechanism said no trials had yet been scheduled within the situation described. The transition was moving, and evidence captured different stages. At the January cutoff, dialogue and preparatory work were ahead of a completed national prosecutorial framework. A family might hear that suspects were being examined without knowing when a case would reach court. The distinction between an active file and a trial date was not bureaucratic pedantry. It was the difference between an announced possibility of justice and a proceeding in which evidence and responsibility would actually be tested. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
By January 31, the mechanism had received 544 requests from seventeen competent jurisdictions, including 107 during the reporting year. The requests concerned 362 distinct proceedings, of which it had assisted with 259. Multiple requests could relate to one case, so the larger number should not be described as 544 trials. The report also said staff worked on 179 separate requests during the period, some requiring continuing support as evidence grew. This was an accumulated legal workload, not one burst of post-Assad activity. Existing cases continued while new access and movement of suspects generated additional needs. The fall of the government expanded demand on a mechanism whose resources had not expanded proportionately. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
Assistance included searches of repositories, analysis, locating witnesses, interviews, support for testimony and expert evidence. After Assad's departure, jurisdictions sought help locating suspects believed to have fled Syria and gathering material inside the country. The geographic direction of accountability had changed. Proceedings abroad still mattered, but evidence could now potentially be collected at the sites where crimes occurred. A surviving archive, physical location or witness inside Syria could strengthen a case heard elsewhere. That cooperation required legal frameworks and source permissions. The state's collapse had opened possibilities without removing the safeguards needed to make evidence usable or protect the people providing it. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The report listed examples of publicly acknowledged assistance across different perpetrators and offences. Proceedings concerned crimes linked to the Assad system, Islamic State's crimes against Yazidis and offences attributed to Army of Islam, among others. The mechanism was not designed to serve one victorious faction's account of the war. Its mandate followed serious international crimes and competent legal proceedings. That breadth mattered for Syrian transitional justice because the new government contained former armed opposition networks whose own conduct could be subject to examination. A process that recognized only one side's victims would be narrower than the evidentiary and legal work already taking place abroad. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
Evidence processing added ninety-six new properties in 2025. In the mechanism's terminology, a property was a batch or logical group of material, not necessarily one document or one crime. Some material came from information providers, witness interviews and the internet. Provenance remained important: a document's origin and the circumstances of acquisition could determine whether a court could rely on it. Preserving a large volume was useful only if the material retained the context needed to assess authenticity, meaning and connection to an alleged perpetrator. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The mechanism also described pausing a particular case file concerning chemical and conventional attacks in 2017. Further work required archives, witnesses and additional material from chemical-weapons bodies. Staff instead prioritized collection, provenance and assistance across cases involving Assad-era officials. A pause was not an abandonment of the underlying allegations or a declaration that they lacked merit. It reflected the relationship between access, staffing and evidentiary objectives. The report showed accountability as a sequence of choices under constraints. A political opening could increase possible work faster than it increased the capacity to carry every possible case forward simultaneously. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
Consultations with survivors and civil society emphasized preservation, inclusion and protection. Online meetings allowed participation by people facing barriers to travel or public appearance. Women's experiences, children and other underrepresented groups informed strategies. The report treated this as part of evidence and justice design, not an ornament added after professionals had fixed the agenda. A detention case could miss important harms if it focused only on the most accessible witnesses. A process demanding exposure could exclude people still afraid of retaliation. Meaningful participation therefore required attention to who could safely speak, what consent covered and how the institution responded when experiences did not fit the most familiar account of the conflict. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
The mechanism's regular budget had not increased since 2020 despite expanded demand. The report described staff losses and reorganization, combining work on detention and unlawful attacks while maintaining a separate Islamic State team. Voluntary contributions remained insufficient for the new requirements. The financial limitation was not Syria's alone; it sat inside the international machinery expected to help make accountability possible. Opening the country created hope and workload, while the institution supporting cases faced reduced capacity. A promise that justice would follow political change needed people able to preserve, verify and analyse evidence. Without them, material could deteriorate faster than proceedings advanced. IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026