(22 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Damascus, Syria – 22 December 2024
1. Various of traffic in Umayyad Square
2. Robert Petit, head of the international, impartial and independent mechanism in Syria, getting out of UNDP office
3. UN insignia on car hood
4. SOUNDBITE (English), Robert Petit, head of the international, impartial and independent mechanism in Syria:
“We welcome the fact that we were invited to come and to engage with the authorities. We had a constructive meeting. We expressed to them our wish to come back and send teams here to start working and helping them, helping civil society, helping victim survivors, helping Syrians to achieve some accountability.”
5. UN flag
6. SOUNDBITE (English), Robert Petit, head of the international, impartial and independent mechanism in Syria:
“We have limited resources. We have in-depth expertise. We can bring that in terms of advising and counselling, but we are specifically mandated to do that, to preserve evidence and to collect it and to be able to analyze it. I want to make it clear. We’re not here to take anything. We are here to come and help preserve and use that evidence in proceedings.”
6. UN convoy moving
7. Convoy on road
8- SOUNDBITE (English), Wafa Mustafa, activist:
“No one has the right to tell us that everyone is dead. Tell me that my father is dead is not an answer. I don’t accept this. For years, when everyone lost hope in Syria, I said, I want my father alive. So today I’m here, and I will find him wherever he is. No one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work, without effort. Now we’re talking about mass graves. These mass graves, you cannot just look at them and tell how many people are there. We need proper organizations to do the actual work, and that we know it will take years, but we need a proper process to have the answers.”
9. Mid of interview
10. SOUNDBITE (English), Wafa Mustafa, activist:
“No future for Syria. I cannot see any Syria in the future where people don’t have answers about their loved ones. Telling everyone that they’re dead is not an answer. We need a proper process that respects the dignity and the work and the humanity of every single Syrian.”
11. Pedestrians
12. Traffic in Damascus
STORYLINE:
The head of a U.N.-backed team investigating crimes committed during the civil war said they are working with the country’s new authorities in hopes of preserving evidence uncovered after Assad’s ouster.
“We welcome the fact that we were invited to come and to engage with the authorities,” Robert Petit said Sunday, describing the meeting as “constructive.”
“We expressed to them our wish to come back and send teams here to start working and helping them, helping civil society, helping victims, survivors, helping Syrians to achieve some accountability,” he said.
As journalists, researchers and the public stream into former detention centers and mass grave sites, many express fears that evidence is taken or destroyed.
Wafa Mustafa, a Syrian activist whose father, Ali, disappeared in 2013 in Damascus, said that "no one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work, without effort.”
She acknowledged that it could take years but said "we need a proper process to have the answers.”
AP video shot by Abdulrahman Shaheen and Malak Harb
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