Report: Student union of Damascus University has “committed war crimes”

A new year-long investigation by the Syrian British Consortium (SBC) investigative team has found that the National Union of Syrian Students (NUSS), which is close to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is guilty of several war crimes, including targeted attacks on pro-democracy activists at Damascus University between 2011 and 2013.

The investigation, based on interviews with witnesses, former students, professors and NUSS members, concludes that the union acted as an arm of the Syrian regime on campus and worked directly with the larger state security apparatus.

Witnesses and former students described how the union patrolled the university grounds, arrested students and tortured them on campus.

Dr. Yasmine Nahlawi, one of the lead investigators, called for the union members to be held accountable.

“We need more serious international action to bring justice to Syrians inside and outside Syria for the violations committed and to work to stop the commission of such crimes in the future,” she said. The new Arab, adding that union members had orchestrated torture, murder and gender-based violence.

“At SBC, we will continue to use every avenue at our disposal to ensure their voices are heard, and we hope their voices are heard.”

According to Nahlawi, the crimes documented in the report are not isolated incidents, but part of a broad, organized and systematic crackdown aimed at suppressing dissent on Syria’s university campuses.

In 2011, the Arab Spring sparked a pro-democracy uprising in Syria. The regime cracked down brutally on the protests, arresting, torturing or executing tens of thousands of demonstrators.

“Our investigation shows that former NUSS members and war criminals are promoted and handpicked by the Syrian state to represent it abroad,” she said.

The report will soon be submitted to the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria and to national war crimes offices to pave the way for the authorities to initiate judicial proceedings.

Suppression of protests

According to the investigation, the NUSS responded to non-violent student protests on campus with brutal means. For example, on April 11, 2011, there was a protest at the Faculty of Science and further protests at the Faculty of Medicine and Economics.

They surrounded the students, shouted insults and attacked them with sticks and batons before locking them in torture chambers.

A source cited in the investigation said that during a protest in which students held up photos of Bashar Al-Assad attached to sticks, NUSS members tore down the portraits and beat them with the sticks while chanting slogans in support of the Syrian president.

Witnesses also told investigators that they were not presented with any formal charges when they were arrested by the NUSS.

There are no consequences to be feared against some NUSS members who oversaw serious violations – such as ordering students to suppress protests or throw fellow students out of windows, the report says.

The group accused Omar Aroub, a senior member of the NUSS leadership in Aleppo who is now vice president of the General Sports Federation of Syria and chairman of the Syrian Paralympic Committee, of being involved in the crackdown on students.

“I was arrested and physically attacked by the NUSS. I am now in Europe with my family and thought I would be far away from war criminals here, but now a NUSS official will participate in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. He will be received as if he had not committed a crime,” Noor Aftar, a former student, told investigators.

“It is as if the regime is saying: ‘Look at us, we have committed crimes against you and are still committing crimes against other Syrians, but the world approves of us and even allows us to be here at the Olympics’… We demand that France and the Olympic Committee stand up for human rights and exclude war criminals from the Olympics,” she added.

Nahlawi reiterated that Aroub should be barred from participating in the Olympic Games.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented that more than 35,000 students were arrested across Syria between 2011 and 2013, demonstrating the extent to which students across the country have been targeted for their anti-government activism.