United Nations Office of the High Commissioner Navi Pillay said at a Geneva Conference on Monday that a growing body of evidence collected by investigators "points to the involvement of senior Syrian officials," including President Bashar Assad, to be implicated for crimes against humanity and war crimes, The Associated Press reported.
"They've produced massive evidence. They point to the fact that the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state," Pillay told a news conference.
"The lists of suspected criminals are handled to her on a confidential basis and will remain sealed until requested by international or national authorities for a 'credible investigation,' and then possibly used for prosecution," she said, as reported by The AP.
Pillay and the four-member UN panel on Syria war crimes, chaired by Brazilian diplomat Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, "previously said Assad's government and supporters and the rebels who oppose them have committed heinous war crimes during the 3-year-old civil war in Syria that has killed more than 120,000 people," The AP also reported.
Pillay later "denied having direct knowledge of their secret list of suspects, but her revealing remarks about the head of state were at odds with a policy of keeping the identity of alleged perpetrators under wraps pending any judicial process," Reuters reported.
"Accountability should be key priority of international community, and I want to make this point again and again as the Geneva 2 talks begin. I reiterate my call to all member states to refer the situation to the [International Criminal Court]," Pillay said at the conference.
"[Pillay] has been talking nonsense for a long time and we don't listen to her," Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, rebuking Pillay's remarks.
Lawyer Herald's Jared Feldschreiber asked the UN Secretary General's deputy spokesman on November 20 at a press briefing about whether Assad's actions in the past two and a half years amounted to war crimes:
"The Secretary-General has repeatedly and strongly called for accountability not just by President Assad, mind you, but by all sides who are guilty of atrocities; who are guilty of violations against civilians, and we continue to do that," the spokesman responded.
The United Nations disclosed in late November that the Assad government and the opposition will hold its first negotiations in Geneva on January 22, 2014 in hopes of finding a political solution to end the nearly three-year civil war.
