MOSCOW – Three human rights groups on Monday announced a legal action they say is the first to target soldiers from the Russian mercenary organization Wagner for crimes committed in Syria, highlighting the growing efforts to hold soldiers hired in war zones accountable.
The case arose out of the turmoil of violence in Syria when several factions, hired soldiers and powers of attorney fought each other outside the Geneva Conventions or other treaties on the laws of war. The suit tries to use a patchwork of national legislation and treaties to plug this hole, which human rights groups call the impunity gap for mercenaries, even as they proliferate on modern battlefields.
“We are seeing a resurgence of mercenaries in armed conflicts around the world,” said Ilya Nuzov, director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the International Federation for Human Rights, one of the groups that opened legal action, in a telephone interview. “Unfortunately, they commit serious human rights abuses.”
The case, if it comes to a court, will appear easy to prosecute because the accused were filmed shooting a man they claimed to be a member of the Islamic State militant group. It is not clear why they recorded the murder, but analysts said it may have been for propaganda reasons or as a horrible form of advertising.
In the video segments that have been circulating online since 2017, a group of Russian-speaking men in the gloomy and almost post-apocalyptic setting of the ruined Al Shaer gas factory in the city of Homs in northern Syria filmed themselves beating their victim with a sledgehammer, then dismembering and burning the body.
Human rights organizations and conflict analysts in Syria have studied the clips for years. But the murder remained an unpunished crime because of the complicated jurisdictional issues surrounding hired soldiers.
Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, two years ago identified one of the attackers as a member of the mercenary group Wagner, which the United States government said in sanction documents was financed by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, an oligarch who was called “Chef de Putin ”for winning catering contracts for the Kremlin.
The Kremlin has denied any ties to Wagner or the Russian-speaking men who appear in the video.
Human rights groups likened the video murder to shootings in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007 by security contractors with Blackwater, the American security company, an episode that has become emblematic of the difficulties in prosecuting contractors. Four Blackwater guards were convicted in an American court, but were pardoned last year by President Donald J. Trump.
Russian prosecutors have so far not opened an investigation. With the action, the International Federation of Human Rights and two other organizations – the Civil Rights Society Memorial and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression – formally requested that they do so.
Although litigants admit that Russia is unlikely to initiate an investigation, they say the process is part of a legal strategy to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions Russia is bound by treaty to observe. To do this, they must first exhaust the resources of Russia’s internal judicial system.
The case was brought up on behalf of a brother of the dead man, who was identified as Mohammad al-Abdullah. Human rights groups say al-Abdullah defected from the Syrian Army, but had no known connection to the Islamic State.
In the video of the murder, one of the Russian speakers says: “This will happen to all ISIS members”. At least four of those present filmed the episode on cell phones or with a small digital camera.
Aleksandr Cherkasov, president of Memorial, said Russian authorities should sue the case to remove violent criminals from society and maintain the rules on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.
“Any cruelty to a captive will be answered cruelly to Russian prisoners,” he said. “Any responsible officer in any army would be interested in this investigation.”
Mercenaries and other so-called non-state fighters are a growing concern for human rights groups. About three quarters of wars today are fought by these soldiers, not members of the nations’ armed forces, said Varvara Pakhomenko, a human rights consultant.
Western governments have accused Russia of sending Wagner’s hired soldiers to the Central African Republic, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.
In Syria, it was partly a strategy to make money. As part of a program first revealed by Russian investigative reporters in 2017, the Syrian government granted companies with ties to Russian security services mining, oil or natural gas rights in territories outside the control of the Syrian state. The practice was seen as an incentive for companies to hire soldiers hired to capture the areas.