JURIST’s James Joseph interviews Patrick Kroker, Senior Legal Advisor at the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, Germany to discuss the war crimes criminal complaint filed with the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office on January 18, 2024 against Turkish-backed militias in Syria’s Afrin region. The complaint calls for an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by five individuals and their militias in Afrin, Syria between March 2018 and the present. The complaint says that the militias have engaged in torture, sexual violence, forced displacement and pillaging of property against local Kurdish populations in an effort to change the demographic composition of the region. It provides testimony from direct witnesses and seeks to add these crimes to an existing structural investigation into non-state actors in Syria, aiming towards the issuing of international arrest warrants and the potential prosecution of high-level suspects in militia leadership.

In January 2018, the Turkish Army and allied armed groups invaded the region of Afrin, Syria. The ongoing atrocities against the local, mainly Kurdish, population consisting of torture, killings, arbitrary arrests and expulsions continue today. These acts committed by Islamist militia groups and the Turkish army constitute crimes under international law. Together with six survivors of these atrocities, the ECCHR, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) and their partners have filed a criminal complaint to the German Federal Prosecutor demanding an investigation into the perpetrators and offering evidence for search investigations. Before the invasion, Afrin was a predominantly Kurdish region in Syria known for its beautiful landscapes and over 13 million olive trees. The local economy was agriculture-based. In 2018, Türkiye launched an attack called Operation Olive Branch to take control of Afrin from Kurdish forces.

JURIST: Could you elaborate on the complaint you filed and also elaborate on the ways that the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) has affected the governance and everyday life of residents in Afrin since seizing control?

Patrick Kroker:

We filed a criminal complaint to the German Federal Prosecutor on Wednesday. It’s a heavy document, and it has about 90 pages of facts and the legal analysis of the facts with roughly 320 footnotes and then another 90 pages of annex that is not publicly available. It’s directed against particularly five individuals of four militias who have been active since exactly six years ago, starting from today. That’s why we filed it on this symbolic day for different human rights violations that are happening in Afrin and in the neighboring districts that we say amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have been in touch with a lot more, but seven people decided to be part of this filing, and six of those are direct survivors and witnesses of these crimes. They’re all from Afrin. One is only a witness, not a direct victim. They are all accessible to the German prosecutor, meaning that they live somewhere around here in Europe so that they can easily travel there. That’s one of the filters, so to say, that we had to apply because the prosecutors, if they go forward with this, only want to have evidence that they can take, and they cannot process evidence from anybody who is outside of the EU and cannot easily travel to be heard as a witness. So that’s why we had to limit ourselves to that, and of course, we have also provided a lot more information that is taken directly from the region, from Afrin. Many said they are willing and able to come and talk about it to the prosecutors and investigators and other organisations as well.

JURIST: Can you elaborate on the primary goals of Operation Olive Branch initiated by the Turkish army and its allied militias in January 2018, and what is the background to the conflict?

Patrick Kroker:

Türkiye’s main goal, I would say, was to not have territory that is controlled by the PYB [Democratic Union Party] close to their borders, which could serve also as a place for the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party]. Anyway, Türkiye doesn’t differentiate, as you probably know, but they didn’t want this threat close to their border, and that’s why they invaded. So they’re fighting through proxies, not only in Syria, but they’re also using them in other arenas, such as Libya. But, the core was here, and since it’s a very fragmented scene, there are a whole bunch of different fighters. Some of them have been ISIS members and others have already been rebranded etc. But what Türkiye did was build them up, and there’s evidence even of them financing them in the beginning, giving them training and so on and so forth. So, it was really a very well-coordinated action with the Turkish army and these factions/militias that started on the 19th and 20th of March 2018, very heavy shelling, and it was also one of the if not even the biggest Turkish air force strikes or actions in decades. And then the ground troops followed, and the ground troops were to a very large degree, but not exclusively, composed of these factions, of these militias, who then wiped out all the PYP fighters that they found. A lot of PYP fighters also fled when they saw that they could not defend themselves against that. And by the 18th of March, the military operation was declared successful by Erdogan, and control was given to these militias in very close coordination also with Turkish forces, with Turkish intelligence, etc. So there are Turkish flags all over the place. There’s Turkish mail running in schools. Kurdish is not the main language anymore. So in many ways, it became also clear that it was governed, so to say, by these militias. There is a lot of chaos among them as well and infighting and competition etc., but in principle, they’re supposed to divide the place up among themselves, including the main city and some other bigger cities that are divided also within themselves. And there is where the violations against the population already started, with the invasion, because speaking of the goals again, it was very soon clear that Türkiye wanted more. They wanted to change the constitution, so to say, of the population, the way the population of Afrin is composed, because it was a very predominantly Kurdish area, I think 80-90 percent before the invasion, and they also saw that as a threat. And so that’s also why they moved in with these, very often, Islamist militias, not primarily Islamist, many of them are just in it for the money. But, also, definitely Islamist and calling the Kurds infidels, and so on and so forth. And so they are driving the people away, and that’s also why we say the indiscriminate use of military force is the first war crime; they are trying to really get the civilian Kurdish population to leave. And since then, these militias have instituted a reign of terror, terrorizing the Kurdish population. People are being driven out of their homes, they’re being arrested for ransom, tortured, etc. Very often, once these homes are emptied, or since they were already empty during the invasion, then fighters and their families are moved in. Also later, Türkiye started to move back Syrians from Türkiye to these places but also from other places where they fled regime-held areas, and they would be given, which is pillage basically, the homes of people that have fled or that have been arrested. So some of our clients have been arrested, tortured, etc. Many had to pay ransom to get out. Once they would get out, they would see that militias or their family would be living in their homes and would threaten them. And when they would try to go to some kind of local government entity, it would say, “You stop complaining otherwise you will be arrested again!”

It’s also a largely agricultural place, to go back to the point of Operation Olive Branch. Olive oils, are very important for the local economy, and militias would seize or sometimes burn down the olive trees, but otherwise, they would make sure that nobody would have access to their fields anymore. And so there’s a whole trade now going on, that this olive oil or the olives are being directly sent to Türkiye. So they are draining everything out of this place, livelihood and housing. So people had no other choice but to leave, and it was the intent for them to drive these people away by terrorizing them basically, totally backed by Türkiye with a plan to change the composition of the population. Türkiye would build big homes there where refugees could be resettled. The militias would also destroy cultural sites and graveyards, everything that pertains to the Kurdish identity of the place, meaning that if you are Kurdish there, you live under a complete terror and a constant risk of being tortured or you leave.

JURIST: What are the legal aspects of the case? Who are the perpetrators that you are asking the German Federal Public Prosecutor to investigate, and what are their alleged crimes?

Patrick Kroker:

The case is constituted of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, sexual violence and the expulsion of a civilian population, with pillage as the main crime. We have named six people from the militias who we say are responsible because there are a bunch of direct perpetrators that have been named by our seven witnesses. But, it is very difficult to identify them. Very often they have these fighting names, and so we filed the complaint against everybody responsible for the crimes. Then we give a very wide picture of a description of the crime, the one I just mentioned in my previous answer. And then very particularly, we mentioned which witnesses have been subjected to what, but then of course, we become a bit more precise, not too precise, as they are under the threat of being identified at this point, and we make sure that they cannot be identified until they’re called to testify.

Legally the goal is as follows: the German federal prosecutor has a structural investigation open against non-state actors in Syria since 2011. They have another one against the government. There are two structural investigations, meaning that they collect and preserve the evidence that they have at their hands, and then potentially if they can identify suspects, and the suspect is here in Germany, they would open a person-specific investigation. Sometimes also, even if the person is not in Germany, they would open a person-specific investigation and maybe even get an arrest warrant. This happened in the case of Jamil Hassan, the former head of air force intelligence of the Syrian regime, against whom there is an outstanding arrest warrant in Germany. These are very important we believe, to address the root of the crime, which is at that level, so that’s why we like to not only go after the direct perpetrators, who have to be investigated for sure, but to say this is the level of responsibility or somebody has control over many others. This is the same that we have done in this criminal complaint, but we say to the prosecutor’s office:

Take this to the structural investigation. Use it. Also, there is no political decision for you to make there because it might be contentious that Türkiye’s fingerprints are all over it. Legally we’re not putting them in the center because we want to fall under the structural investigation against nonstate armed actors. So there are political implications legally that have to be disregarded. There’s no reason to take them into consideration because we do fall under the scope of nonstate Syrian actors committing crimes in Syria. You have evidence here in Germany, preserve it. And then these are high-level suspects, if you do find enough evidence against them. And your means are much more than the means that we have a civil society organisation.

Person-specific investigations against them and potential arrest warrants against them are the goals of this criminal complaint.

At the same time, of course, we are aware that many of these witnesses have seen many people and can speak about many people. So if they’re being heard as witnesses also, and for example there would be suspects in Germany already, and of course it would help them and they could be identified, etc. But since we don’t know who’s in Germany, it’s also one of the reasons why we went for the higher level. The goal would be international arrest warrants. So that whenever these people start traveling, they can be arrested very easily, but also at this point, they understand what we are doing. It’s not being ignored; it has consequences. This also shows the victims that somebody cares and that this is not being ignored, and so our main demand is investigations.

There’s already quite a lot happening on Syria. It started with the non-state actors, mainly Al-Nusra Front, Daesh etc. These were the types of cases starting around 2015, also with our actions that we took in Germany and many other countries, more focused on the regime crimes with the arrest warrant against Mohammed Shami Hassan, and then later on when Anwar Raslan was caught here. Now, you have a trial coming up in absentia in France. You have also the Shabiha militia, the pro-regime militia. We had a case in Berlin; they just finished acase in the Netherlands. There will be more coming up of that kind. So the picture of accountability is becoming more complete, but there are more blank spots. But the most striking one is this one. It’s mostly the Türkiye-backed militias in the north, and we focused on Afrin. And of course, in the neighboring districts, a lot can be said as well. We needed to focus it also so that it’s manageable, and that’s what we focused on: where it’s most striking. And that is Afrin. And that’s a complete blank spot. So please close that blank spot and investigate them as well. You have, you know, Islamist militias, you have regime-affiliated militias, but nothing has happened against these, so they need to be put into the equation. They need to become part of the investigation. And the fact that they are backed by Türkiye cannot be a reason, neither legally nor politically, not to do that. That’s the main demand.

*More Information can be found in this briefing by the ECCHR on “Crimes in Syria: The neglected atrocities of Afrin.” A video has also been posted on YouTube entitled “Justice for Afrin: Syrias’s unseen crimes.”