If someone is carrying out a terrible crime, is their behavior likely to be influenced by the knowledge that they have been identified, or merely by suspecting that they have been discovered and that their every move is now being watched? This is important when considering the UN commission that is monitoring human rights abuses in Syria. The lead investigator, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, has announced that the commission has drawn up a new list of offenders, based upon a “formidable and extraordinary body of evidence” that it has gathered. However, the names on this list are not being revealed. The ultimate aim of these investigations is that the accused will be indicted by the International Criminal Court, assuming that at some point Russia and China can be persuaded not to veto a UN Security Council Resolution to this effect. Leaving aside the current hopelessness of such a development, why are the names on the list being kept secret? Is the thinking that offenders are already so steeped in blood that knowing they have been identified will merely cause them to continue their crimes, moreover encouraging them to take murderous care to destroy as much evidence as possible, which might one day serve to convict them? Or is the idea that simply not knowing that they have been singled out for their monstrous deeds might cause them to desist? More importantly, does the secrecy of the UN list serve to discourage those involved in the bitter conflict from becoming involved in specific crimes, other than, in the case of the Assad regime, the fundamental crime of waging war on its own people? And anyway, who is likely to be on the list? Bashar Assad and his top henchmen and commanders, for sure, since they have all been party to a policy of deliberate slaughter in opposition enclaves. Members of the Shabiha militias will also be high on the roll for terrible crimes such as the systematic execution of 108 villagers at Houla last May. So too will those rebel commanders who have been filmed torturing and executing government troops and supporters, including captured Shabiha. But how far down the bloody record of crimes does the secret UN list reach? Does it, for instance, include the names of Syrian air force jet and helicopter pilots who have bombed and fired rockets on civilian areas? Is it likely that Syrian army artillerymen who have operated the heavy guns that have bombarded defenseless urban districts or villages will also find themselves called to account for the thousands of women and children their shells have torn apart? Where indeed could the secret list stop? The reality of course is that individual crimes carried out by regime troops or Free Syrian Army fighters are unlikely to be tabulated. The UN investigators have assembled evidence mostly against the big names in the regime. These are the people who will lose everything when Assad falls, and who will continue to order yet more slaughter, right up until the bloody end of the conflict. Few of them operate in the shadows. Their names are generally well known. In the circumstances, therefore, it seems strange that the UN is not prepared to name them publicly.
