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2021-03-16 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Activists file landmark Syria case against Kremlin-linked guns-for-hire outfit
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[IsraelTimes] Advocacy groups from La Belle France, Russia, and Syria accuse Wagner Group fighters over torture of a Syrian detainee, but powerfully connected Russian firm unlikely to face convictions.
Three NGOs on Monday announced a landmark legal case in Moscow against Russian mercenary group Wagner over the torture of a detainee in Syria, aiming to hold to account a murky fighting force with Kremlin links.
The legal push against private military contractor Wagner Group follows a wave of torture-related cases in Europa
Continued from Page 2
 ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
against Syrian regime officials a decade into a punishing war whose tide was turned by Moscow’s military intervention in 2015.
Three prominent advocacy groups from La Belle France, Russia and Syria filed the criminal complaint against alleged members of the contractor outfit over the beheading in 2017 of a man believed to have deserted from the Syrian army.
Wagner has been linked to a powerful ally of President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the case probing potential "war crimes" is unlikely to lead to any convictions.
Prigozhin, 59, who has been hit with US sanctions for meddling in US presidential elections in 2016, denies any association with Wagner.
But the proceedings represent a rare attempt to bring Wagner out into the open, several years after reports of their deployment in conflicts across the Middle East and Africa first emerged.
"This complaint is important because we aren’t just dealing with a single crime. This is a whole wave of impunity," Alexander Cherkasov, a senior member of Memorial — one of the groups bringing the claim — told AFP.
Although private military companies are illegal in Russia, Wagner has in recent years played an increasingly important role in buttressing and realizing the Kremlin’s ambitions abroad, observers say.
The group was reportedly dispatched alongside Russian warplanes and ground troops following Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian war in September 2015 on the side of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Leveler of Latakia...
’s army.
Its presence there was forced into the spotlight in 2018 when independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that several Russian-speaking men who executed and mutilated a detainee on video in the eastern Homs province were Wagner fighters.
The complaint brought Monday on behalf of the victim’s family aims to force Moscow to bring criminal proceedings against the alleged members of the private contractor group, in what NGOs say is the first case of its kind.
In a statement, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Memorial, and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression said they had filed evidence that clearly links at least one defendant to Wagner.
‘MORAL RESPONSIBILITY’
"The Russian government must assume its legal and moral responsibilities for the violations committed by its army, including the private entities involved in external military operations under its command, such as the Wagner Group," said Mazen Darwish, director-general and founder of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
Ilya Novikov, one of the Syrian family’s lawyers, said Russia is obliged under its constitution to investigate crimes carried out by Russian nationals abroad.
But, he added, "the Investigative Committee has not, to date, initiated any investigation of the crime in question".
The complaint on Monday follows dozens brought in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Norway against officials in Assad’s regime by around 100 refugees, backed by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a Berlin-based NGO.
Across Europe, activists are joining forces with police and UN Sherlocks in collecting testimonies, sifting through tens of thousands of photos, videos, and files of one of the best-documented conflicts in history. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-03-16 02:17||
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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-03-16 05:21||
2021-03-16 05:21||
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