Tag Archives: Refugees

Germany girds for potential spike in Islamic State attacks

Police barrier is pictured at the train station in Grafing

BERLIN (Reuters) – The German government voiced concern on Tuesday that Islamic State could step up attacks in Europe as it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, and said its domestic intelligence agency is training to respond to a large-scale assault.

Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere welcomed gains made by a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, but said they were not diminishing the risk of attacks in Europe.

“On the contrary, we fear that Islamic State will externalize, transfer its activities to Europe, especially because of military losses in the region,” the minister, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic party, told reporters.

Germany has been on high alert for possible large-scale militant incidents – potentially including military-style weapons – since the IS attacks in Paris last November and Brussels in March, Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, told the same news conference.

He said the agency had carried out several exercises to prepare for such events, and several attacks had already been thwarted. Three Syrian men were earlier this month suspected of planning large-scale attacks in Duesseldorf.

Maassen said the agency was also vigilant for potential lone-wolf attacks, self-radicalized individuals, and possible militants smuggled in under the cover of over one million mostly Muslim refugees that have entered Germany over the past year.

He said authorities had identified clear evidence against 17 individuals who had entered Germany disguised as refugees, and most were either dead or had been arrested. “We must keep a particularly close eye on this group of people,” he said.

Authorities were checking tips about a total of 400 potential Islamists among the refugees, but most of those had turned out to be false claims made by other refugees, he said.

De Maiziere said the rate of Islamists leaving Germany to join Islamic State in Iraq and Syria had slowed, but remained troubling. A total of 820 such people were now believed to have departed Germany for the region, up from 780 at the end of December, with about one-third estimated to have returned.

About 60 of those who had tried to reach the region were under the age of 18, and 20 of those that actually succeeded were girls, Maasen said.

At the same time, Germany has seen sharp increases in the number of ultra-conservative Islamists known as Salafists in recent years, with the total number of sympathizers now seen at 8,900, up from 7,000 at the end of 2014, German officials said.

De Maiziere said it was important to reintegrate the so-called “foreign fighters” who returned to Germany, some of whom were highly radicalized, while others were disillusioned.

(This version of the story corrects the spelling of the name in paras 4 and 10)

(Reporting by Thorsten Severin and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Boat migrant rescues surge as calm seas return to Mediterranean

Rescue worker greeting migrant child on the boat

By Darrin Zamit Lupi

ABOARD THE TOPAZ RESPONDER (Reuters) – Ships manned by humanitarian organizations, the Italian navy and coast guard helped rescue about 4,500 boat migrants on Thursday as calm seas returned to the Mediterranean, prompting a surge in departures from North Africa.

Rescue operations were continuing, an Italian coast guard spokesman said. The corpse of a woman was taken from a large rubber boat, and the migrants were collected from a total of about 40 different vessels, he said.

The Topaz Responder, a ship run by the Malta-based humanitarian group Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), said earlier in the day that around two dozen migrant boats had been spotted in the sea about 20 nautical miles from the Libyan port city of Sabratha.

Libya’s navy intercepted about 1,000 migrants on board eight rubber boats off Sabratha on Thursday morning, spokesman Ayoub Qassem said. He said the migrants were from Arab as well as sub-Saharan African countries.

“The mass movement is probably the result of week-long, unfavorable weather conditions” that have come to an end, MOAS said on Twitter.

The Topaz Responder picked up 382 sub-Saharan African migrants from three different large rubber boats. The Bourbon Argos, a ship run by humanitarian group Doctors without Borders, plucked 1,139 migrants from 10 boats, and two other humanitarian vessels picked up 156 more.

The Italian navy said it had rescued 515 from two dinghies, German humanitarian group Sea-Watch said it had 100 on board, and the Italian coast guard, which coordinates rescue operations, said it had deployed several boats.

An agreement between Turkey and the EU to stop migrant departures for the Greek islands has reduced boat arrivals by 98 percent during the first five months of the year from the same period of 2015, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

But arrivals in Italy continue at about the same clip as last year, and the deadly central Mediterranean route has already claimed 2,438 lives, IOM said.

Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s worst immigration crisis since World War Two and now in its third year. More than 320,000 boat migrants came to Italy from North Africa in 2014-15.

As of Wednesday, 56,328 boat migrants had been brought to Italy in 2016, a 5.5 percent decrease on the same period of last year, according to the Interior Ministry.

Nigerians, Eritreans and Gambians were the top three migrant nationalities this year, the ministry said, and more than 125,000 are now living in Italian shelters.

(Reporting by Darrin Zammit Lupi on the Topaz Responder migrant rescue ship, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, and Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Cynthia Osterman)

Indonesia says 44 migrants must sail on after being resupplied

Sri Lankan immigrants are pictured on their boat after being stranded at Pulo Kapuk beach in Lhoknga, Aceh province

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian authorities have stopped 44 migrants believed to be from Sri Lanka from disembarking from their boat and said on Friday the vessel had to head back out to sea after being supplied with food and fuel and repaired.

Indonesia has for years been a stepping stone for refugees and migrants from the Middle East and South Asia hoping to reach Australia. Australia has been urging it to act to stop the flow of people, often traveling in unseaworthy boats.

The boat carrying the 44 people, including several women and children, was found stranded off the coast of the northern Indonesian province of Aceh last week.

“We fixed their boat and gave them the food and fuel they asked for. We also did health checks and we see their condition is good,” provincial governor Zaini Abdullah told media.

“They can be on their way. We are waiting for high tide … Don’t look at it as if we are pushing them out or ejecting them. We have fulfilled the humanitarian obligations.”

It was not clear if the people on board the boat wanted to land in Indonesia or sail on but activists said they should have been given access to the U.N. refugee agency.

Even though Indonesia is seen as a transit country on the way to Australia, many migrants end up staying there for years.

More than 1,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh landed in Aceh last year after spending days on overcrowded boats, adrift in the Andaman Sea.

 

(Reporting by Angie Teo and Kanupriya Kapoor; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Want to save migrants in the Mediterranean? There’s an app for that

Migrants are seen on a partially submerged boat before to be rescued by Spanish fregate Reina Sofia

By Magdalena Mis

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A smartphone application that allows users to scan the Mediterranean for boats in distress is being tested by a migrant rescue service, which hopes that crowdsourced information will help it save more people.

The I SEA App, available on iTunes, divides a satellite image of the sea route migrants are taking into millions of small plots which are, in turn, assigned to registered users.

Each user then monitors their plot through the app and can send an alert to the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) and the authorities if they spot potential trouble.

After receiving an alert, the authorities analyze the image and launch a rescue mission if necessary.

“The idea is that with more people getting interested you can cover bigger areas of the sea,” Ian Ruggier, MOAS head of operations, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It allows people to see that they are contributing towards saving lives. (The success) will depend on the popularity of the app,” he said by phone from Malta.

Migrants hoping to reach Italy from Libya pay hundreds of dollars to traffickers for a place in a boat. The vessels are often flimsy and ill-equipped for the journey across the Mediterranean.

The crossing is far more dangerous than that between Turkey and Greece, which was the busiest sea route until a deal to curb flows between the European Union and Turkey came into force in March.

So far this year more than 40,000 migrants have arrived in Italy after crossing the central Mediterranean, many fleeing poverty, repression and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 2,000 have died trying to make the crossing.

Launched in 2014, MOAS is the first privately funded migrant rescue service. It is already using drones in its rescue missions in the Mediterranean.

According to its website, MOAS rescued nearly 12,000 people in the first two years of becoming operational.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Migrant children face beatings, rape, forced labor

A girl hugs a volunteer as a group of migrants prepare to leave

GENEVA (Reuters) – Migrant children making the perilous journey to Europe to escape war and poverty face possible beatings, rape and forced labor in addition to risk of drowning in the Mediterranean, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

Minors account for a growing percentage of migrants and refugees, particularly those trying to reach Italy by sea from Libya, it said in a report, “Danger Every Step of the Way”.

Of the roughly 206,200 people who arrived in Europe by sea this year to June 4, one in three was a child, it said, citing figures from the U.N. refugee agency.

“Every step of the journey is fraught with danger, all the more so for the nearly one in four children traveling without a parent or guardian,” UNICEF said.

That ratio was far higher on boats from Libya, where more than nine out of ten children were unaccompanied. UNICEF said there were almost 235,000 migrants and refugees in Libya and 956,000 in the Sahel, many or most hoping to go to Europe.

UNICEF said that there was “strong evidence that criminal human trafficking networks were targeting the most vulnerable, in particular women and children.

“Italian social workers claim that both boys and girls are sexually assaulted and forced into prostitution while in Libya, and that some of the girls were pregnant when they arrived in Italy, having been raped,” it said.

The U.N. refugee agency has said the flow of people from Turkey to Greece has slowed hugely but dealing with migrants now stranded along the route remains a huge challenge. [nL8N1954FE]

UNICEF said many children had fallen between the cracks of overstretched asylum systems and their cases should be a priority.

“All too often children are held behind bars – in detention facilities or in police custody – because of a lack of space in child protection centers and limited capacity for identifying alternative solutions,” it said.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has decried a “worrying rise” in detentions of migrants in Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to confining children while asylum requests are processed. [L8N1951GW]

Authorities in some countries take up to two years to evaluate a child’s request for asylum, and processes to reunify families can be equally slow, UNICEF said.

Once in Europe, migrants and refugees are often housed in sports halls, former military barracks or other temporary shelters, sometimes without access to schooling and psychological support, it said.

Some have faced xenophobic attacks, hate speech and stigmatization, it said, citing 45 arson attacks on refugee shelters in Germany during the first half of this year.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Damascus Refugees run deadly gauntlet to fetch aid, food

A general view shows a deserted street at the beginning of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp

y John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Palestinians living in Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus depend on food aid to survive the Syrian civil war. But collecting it can be lethal.

With Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front fighting each other for control of the camp, the United Nations has been unable to deliver food for more than a year and has to distribute it in neighboring areas instead.

On the journey to the collection point, tarpaulins hung between buildings offer the only protection in some areas keeping residents out of the sights of snipers, who often fail to distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Once the camp residents have run this gauntlet, they still have to get through an Islamic State checkpoint. This controls the way out to the nearby town of Yalda, where the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and other groups hand out aid when they can.

One 22-year-old resident who called himself Mahmoud – although he said this was an alias due to the risk of reprisals by the militants – described via internet messages how he makes the trip three times a week.

“I leave my house, and about a kilometer away there’s the checkpoint,” he told Reuters. “Most streets in the camp are in the sights of snipers, from both sides – I have to watch out for them. Some streets I run down, some I can just walk.”

While tens of thousands have fled the camp since the war began, hundreds of residents still brave the same journey.

The camp has existed for decades, one of many set up in the region after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes. Today they largely accommodate descendents of the original refugees, although some Syrians displaced by the war have inhabited Yarmouk.

Yarmouk has been bombarded, besieged and isolated from the outside world since early in the multi-sided conflict, which is now in its sixth year. Government forces, rebels and jihadists have all fought for control of the camp that lies just a few kilometers (miles) from the heart of Damascus.

NO MAN’S LAND

Islamic State entered the densely built up Yarmouk in April last year, helped by Nusra Front fighters in a rare instance of cooperation between the jihadist rivals, capturing most of it.

Since then they have turned their guns on each other, and fighting in recent weeks has destroyed countless more homes as Islamic State tries to take areas held by Nusra Front.

“Things got worse recently. This is a fight taking place only inside the camp, not spreading out to another area – it’s concentrated,” said Mahmoud. Fighters were targeting houses and burning them, even with occupants still inside, to hamper advances by the other side, he added.

Across a strip of no man’s land from Islamic State territory, rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army control Yalda.

“The route to Yalda is more or less dangerous depending on how heavy the clashes are. Lately, people living in the fighting hotspots have to move around behind tarpaulin curtains and banks of earth,” said Yousef, who like all the Yarmouk residents interviewed by Reuters also asked to use an alias.

“Last Thursday, someone got shot by a sniper,” said Yousef.

Mohammed, 30, who before the latest violence sold food from a street stall, said: “If someone leaves their house to get a bit of water, they might not come back. Getting bread, getting food, could cost someone their life.”

FRAGILE AID SUPPLY

Islamic State controls at least two-thirds of Yarmouk and has been trying to prise the rest from Nusra Front since April, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that several civilians have been killed in recent weeks.

Many do not venture out. “Most people just sit at home … we’re stuck here and stuck in the camp,” said Abu Anas, a former manual laborer.

“There’s very little water, and little fuel. We chiefly rely on aid from UNRWA. It’s not much but it’s our best hope – every 20 days we get a parcel which is just about enough for a family.” These include around 4 kg (9 pounds) of lentils, 5 kg of sugar, 1 kg of pasta and tins of tomatoes, he said.

Fighting can close the checkpoint for days at a time. But if they can get through, Mahmoud, Yousef and their fellow residents also buy any extra provisions they can afford at market stalls in Yalda, before returning.

Even getting aid the few kilometers from Damascus to Yalda, through government and then rebel-held territory, requires painstaking talks with local authorities, community leaders and commanders of the warring sides.

“When we first had access to Yalda, just to get there the U.N. had to negotiate 17 separate agreements,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said. For at least a month beginning in April, UNRWA could not even reach Yalda, and warned that residents faced starvation until supplies resumed.

“Inside Yarmouk, the fighting forces have been using indiscriminately large munitions,” Gunness said. “For a U.N.-assisted population in the 21st century to find itself in this situation in the capital city of a U.N. member state is completely unacceptable.”

EXODUS

Frequent power and water supply cuts mean people have to rely on generators and drinking water sold from the back of trucks which residents bring in by a different route. Water from wells – many of them hard to reach because of the fighting – is polluted and can be used only for washing, Yousef said.

Among the thousands who have joined the exodus from Yarmouk, some have sought refuge inside Syria with others heading to neighboring countries or Europe.

An aid worker for the Jafra Foundation, which monitors human rights in Palestinian camps in Syria, said several hundred people had left Yarmouk in recent weeks alone.

The camp’s pre-war Palestinian population of 160,000 has plunged to between 3,000 and 6,000 residents. At least the same number of displaced from the camp also live in Yalda, he said.

Mahmoud, who said his mother was killed in shelling by government forces three years ago, will stay.

“My home is here and my dad lives here. When I go to Yalda, I feel like a displaced person,” he said. “Yarmouk is my camp, I can’t leave it.”

(editing by David Stamp)

Falluja refugees say Islamic State uses food to enlist fighters

Civilians who fled their homes due to clashes gather at the Iraqi army's Camp Tariq, south Falluja

By Saif Hameed

GARMA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqis who fled Islamic State-held Falluja as government and allied forces advanced on the city said they had survived on stale dates and the militants were using food to enlist fighters whose relatives were going hungry.

The ultra-hardline Sunni fighters have kept a close guard on food storage in the besieged city near Baghdad that they captured in January 2014, six months before they declared a caliphate across large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The militants visited families regularly after food ran short with offers of supplies for those who enlisted, said 23-year-old Hanaa Mahdi Fayadh from Sijir on the northeastern outskirts of Falluja.

“They told our neighbor they would give him a sack of flour if his son joined them; he refused and when they had gone, he fled with his family,” she said.

“We left because there was no food or wood to make fires, besides, the shelling was very close to our house.”

She and others interviewed in a school transformed into a refugee center in Garma, a town under government control east of Falluja, said they had no money to buy food from the group.

The Iraqi government stopped paying the salaries of employees there and in other cities under Islamic State control a year ago to stop the group seizing the funds.

Fayadh escaped Sijir on May 27, four days after the government offensive on Falluja began, with a group of 15 relatives and neighbors, walking through farmland brandishing white flags.

Most of the 1,500 displaced people who found refuge in the school in Garma were women and children, because the army takes men for screening over possible ties with Islamic State. Fayadh said she was waiting for news of her two brothers who were being investigated.

HUMAN SHIELDS

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said last week the offensive had slowed to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja with limited access to water, food and electricity.

Fayadh said the situation in the city was very difficult. “The only thing remaining in the few shops open was dates, old, stale dates and even those were very expensive,” she said.

Azhar Nazar Hadi, 45, said the militants had asked her family to move from Sijir into Falluja itself, a clear attempt to use them as human shields.

“We hid,” she said. “There was shooting, mortars and clashes, we stayed hidden until the forces came in” and escorted them out to the refugee center.

The militants took hundreds of people, along with their cattle, with them into Falluja, Hadi said.

“Life was difficult, very hard, especially when we stopped receiving salaries and retirement pensions.

“The last seven months we ran out of everything and had to survive on dates, and water,” she said. “Flour, rice and cooking oil were no longer available at an affordable price.”

A 50 kg (110 lb) sack of flour cost 500,000 dinars ($428.45), almost half an average Iraqi employee’s month salary.

Abadi ordered the offensive on Falluja, which lies 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, after a series of bombings claimed by Islamic State hit Shi’ite districts of the capital, causing the worst death toll this year.

Between 500 and 700 militants are in Falluja, according to a U.S. military estimate. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia coalition that is supporting the Iraqi army offensive on the city says the number of IS fighters there is closer to 2,500.

The United Nations says about 50,000 civilians remain trapped in Falluja, which has been under siege since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province to the west.

When Hadi was asked what Islamic State militants had been telling civilians in Falluja, it was her six-year old child who answered, reciting the Koranic verse: “Be patient, God is with those who are patient.”

(writing by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Photograph captures week of tragedy in Mediterranean

A German rescuer from the humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch holds drowned migrant baby of the Libyan cost

By Steve Scherer

ROME (Reuters) – A photograph of a drowned migrant baby in the arms of a German rescuer was distributed on Monday by a humanitarian organization aiming to persuade European authorities to ensure safe passage to migrants, after hundreds are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean last week.

The baby, who appears to be no more than a year old, was pulled from the sea on Friday after the capsizing of a wooden boat. Forty-five bodies arrived in the southern Italian port of Reggio Calabria on Sunday aboard an Italian navy ship, which picked up 135 survivors from the same incident.

German humanitarian organization Sea-Watch, operating a rescue boat in the sea between Libya and Italy, distributed the picture taken by a media production company on board and which showed a rescuer cradling the child like a sleeping baby.

In an email, the rescuer, who gave his name as Martin but did not want his family name published, said he had spotted the baby in the water “like a doll, arms outstretched”.

“I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive … It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes.”

The rescuer, a father of three and by profession a music therapist, added: “I began to sing to comfort myself and to give some kind of expression to this incomprehensible, heart-rending moment. Just six hours ago this child was alive.”

Like the photograph of the three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan lying lifeless on a Turkish beach last year, the image puts a human face on the more than 8,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean since the start of 2014.

Little is known about the child, who according to Sea-Watch was immediately handed over to the Italian navy. Rescuers could not confirm whether the partially clothed infant was a boy or a girl and it is not known whether the child’s mother or father are among the survivors.

Sea-Watch collected about 25 other bodies, including another child, according to testimony from the crew seen by Reuters. The Sea-Watch team said it unanimously decided to publish the photo.

“In the wake of the disastrous events it becomes obvious to the organizations on the ground that the calls by EU politicians to avoid further death at sea sum up to nothing more than lip service,” Sea-Watch said in a statement in English distributed along with the photograph.

“If we do not want to see such pictures we have to stop producing them,” Sea-Watch said, calling for Europe to allow migrants safe and legal passage as a way of shutting down people smuggling and further tragedies.

At least 700 migrants may have died at sea this past week in the busiest week of migrant crossings from Libya towards Italy this year, the UN Refugee agency said on Sunday.

The boat carrying the baby left the shores of Libya near Sabratha late on Thursday, and then began to take on water, according to accounts by survivors collected by Save the Children on Sunday. Hundreds were on board when it capsized, the survivors said.

(Editing and additional reporting by Mark John in London)

U.N. urges Greece to improve poor living conditions for refugees

A refugee woman hangs clothes to dry at the sun after heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the village

ENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees in some sites in Greece are cramped in “sub-standard conditions” in poorly ventilated “derelict warehouses and factories”, with insufficient food, water, toilets and showers, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.

“We urge the Greek authorities, with the financial support provided by the European Union, to find better alternatives quickly,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Middle East Refugees help Europe prosecute war crimes

Birds fly over a damaged neighbourhood, in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria

By Thomas Escritt

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – European authorities are seeking testimony from some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Middle East violence as they try to build war crimes cases linked to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

As witnesses to atrocities, they are invaluable to prosecutors preparing trials in European courts that will offer a way round the United Nations impasse that has prevented the setting up of an international court for Syria.

The search for evidence takes a variety of forms. Dutch and German immigration services hand out leaflets to arriving migrants, inviting them to testify. In Norway, police screen arrivals’ mobile phones for evidence of possible involvement in war crimes.

“Over the next five years you’ll see a lot of prosecutions,” said Matevz Pezdirc of the European Union’s Genocide Network, a forum that brings together police and prosecutors twice a year in The Hague to swap information about war crimes.

Some alleged perpetrators may be European citizens who have joined Islamic State; others may be militants who have traveled to Europe from Syria or Iraq, blending in with the more than 1 million migrants and refugees who streamed into the continent last year.

“You may have lots of victims or witnesses in one place, but you can’t move with a prosecution until you have a perpetrator in your jurisdiction,” Pezdirc said.

Most European countries have legislation allowing them to prosecute international crimes like genocide regardless of where in the world they happen. About 15 have units dedicated to investigating and prosecuting them.

Over the past decade, authorities in Europe have launched 1,607 international war crimes cases in domestic jurisdictions, while another 1,339 are ongoing, according to EU judicial cooperation agency Eurojust.

STRESSED WITNESSES

German police have compiled testimony from hundreds of potential witnesses to the Syria conflict, and war crimes prosecutors in Karlsruhe have questioned a few dozen of them in greater depth.

But gathering evidence is a painstaking process. Traumatized witnesses, fresh from harrowing journeys on foot and by sea, need time before they are ready to testify, and can often face only short periods of questioning each day.

“The refugees usually need time to rest and calm down before they decide to cooperate with law enforcement,” Pezdirc said.

Investigators have interviewed Yazidi Kurd refugees in Germany for evidence of alleged genocide against the ethnic and religious minority. A German citizen thought to be in Syria is the subject of a sealed arrest warrant on separate war crimes charges.

They are preparing further cases against two other suspects, one accused of torture and another of kidnapping a U.S. legal adviser near Damascus.

In France, genocide and war crimes prosecutors have a handful of investigations open into Syrian nationals, including a former Syrian colonel, once a doctor in a military hospital, who has sought asylum.

More than 4,000 European citizens are estimated to have left to fight in Syria, of whom around a third have since returned home, a Dutch think tank said earlier this year.

With both witnesses and perpetrators on their territory, European prosecutors have already brought some cases. A German citizen is on trial for war crimes after Facebook posts showed him posing alongside decapitated heads.

Last year, Swedish courts convicted a Syrian on the basis of a video showing him torturing a fellow combatant. Crimes being investigated around the continent include torture, murder, rape, crimes against humanity and genocide.

SECURITY COUNCIL SPLIT

With more than 400,000 people killed in Syria since 2011, there have been calls for perpetrators of massacres to face trials in a U.N. court, like those that followed the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

But division among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – who include Syria’s ally, Russia – has stymied attempts to refer such cases to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, or set up a special tribunal.

So rights campaigners are pinning their hopes on national prosecutions, and Syria and Iraq have come to dominate the agenda of the Genocide Network, which has been operating since 2004.

“If there’s going to be justice in Syria, it’s going to be in the courts of third states,” said Stephen Rapp, a U.S. diplomat who led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, at a meeting of law enforcement officials in The Hague this week.

Successful trials could help to influence the wider course of the war and the migrant crisis, he said.

“If we do more to show there’s justice, that there’s hope, if we can show that this way of fighting the conflict is going to have consequences, we can reduce the refugee flow.”

(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe in Paris, Stine Jacobsen in Oslo, Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Rodrigo De Miguel Roncal in Madrid; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Mark Trevelyan)