Mansour Omari

Human rights advocate and legal researcher specializing in transitional justice and conflict

Although human rights reports have described the mass atrocities committed in May 2013 by Syrian regular forces, including army and special forces units, and their affiliated paramilitary groups, the National Defense Forces, in al-Bayda village and the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood of Baniyas (Tartous governorate, western Syria) as war crimes and crimes against humanity, a close legal examination of these events and their context through the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide shows that they constitute genocide.

Drawing on evidence documented in human rights reports, including a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, the Syrian Network for Human Rights’ report “A Stark Example of Sectarian Cleansing”, Human Rights Watch’s “No One’s Left”, an Amnesty International report, and the perpetrators’ public statements, this legal analysis concludes that the perpetrators acted with specific intent, the mental element required for genocide, to destroy, in whole or in part, an identifiable targeted group: Sunni civilian residents of the targeted coastal areas.

On May 2 and 3, 2013, regular Syrian army units, special forces, National Defense Forces, and local pro-government militias entered al-Bayda and the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood of Baniyas, both predominantly Sunni areas. Over the 48 hours following the end of limited armed clashes, these forces executed at least 248 civilians, including 45 women and at least 43 children. They also piled up and burned bodies, destroyed infrastructure, and forcibly displaced residents.

Under international law, these acts are described as extrajudicial executions and classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, international jurisprudence, including that of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), provides the legal framework for classifying these acts as genocide.

The Material Element of Genocide

Under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group.

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The events in al-Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa satisfy at least three categories of these acts:

(a) Killing members of the group: More than 248 people were killed, including through close-range executions and the killing of children and infants. Reports document systematic executions of civilians who were not participating in hostilities, carried out at close range. In al-Bayda, pro-government forces entered homes, separated males from females, and executed men in streets, squares, and houses. In numerous cases, entire families were wiped out, including members of the al-Bayasi, Suweid, and al-Shughari families. The forces also carried out targeted executions in Ras al-Nabaa, where entire families, including infants, were shot dead at close range.

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm: This included mutilation, machete attacks, and forcing people to witness executions. Victims were struck with knives and machetes before or during their execution. Women were subjected to psychological torture and threats of sexual violence, while survivors were forced to walk over the mutilated bodies of their children and spouses. In Prosecutor v. Krstić, the ICTY recognized that serious bodily or mental harm includes physical torture, nonfatal gunshot injuries, and severe psychological trauma suffered by survivors forced to witness the execution of their immediate relatives.

(c) Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction: This included burning homes and shops and displacing residents. The forces systematically burned homes, food supplies, and shops, and destroyed personal documents. They blocked escape routes, including the checkpoint at al-Nabaa bridge, trapping civilians inside the execution zone under continuing shelling and ground raids. A group’s physical destruction need not be immediate. It also encompasses creating conditions that make survival impossible, as established in the ICTR’s Prosecutor v. Akayesu case.

Identifying the Targeted Protected Group

The Genocide Convention protects “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

In international jurisprudence, including the Akayesu case concerning Rwanda and the Jelisić case concerning the former Yugoslavia, protected groups have been identified through objective criteria, subjective perceptions, and the perpetrators’ understanding of the targeted population.

Identifying the protected group:

• Objective demographic and geographic criteria: A Sunni enclave in Tartous governorate, distinct both demographically and geographically.
• Subjective perception reflected in the perpetrators’ targeting patterns: Selective killing in which the victims were Sunni, with Christian neighborhoods explicitly spared the atrocities.
• Objective identification: Al-Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa constituted demographically identifiable Sunni enclaves.
• The perpetrators’ subjective perception: Their intent was evident in targeting based on sectarian identity and in statements made before and after the events. Witness accounts confirm that government forces and National Defense Forces exclusively targeted Sunni families and Sunni-owned shops. Two Christian residents of al-Bayda also confirmed that pro-government forces did not execute anyone or carry out looting or arson in the area’s Christian quarter. This differential treatment establishes that the victims were explicitly targeted as members of a particular religious group.

The Legal Characterization of Specific Intent, or Genocidal Intent

One of the fundamental criteria distinguishing genocide from crimes against humanity is specific intent: the particular intention to destroy the protected group, in whole or in part. Even when perpetrators deny or do not declare genocidal intent, international tribunals have allowed this specific intent to be inferred from patterns of deliberate conduct, as in the Krstić and Rutaganda cases.

Inferring Intent From the Method of Operation and Pattern of Conduct

In Prosecutor v. Galić and Prosecutor v. Krstić, the ICTY held that genocidal intent may be inferred from:

• The systematic nature of the killings.
• The selection of victims solely because they belong to a particular group.
• The scale of destruction relative to the size of the targeted community.

In al-Bayda village, the forces executed hundreds of civilians after armed resistance had ceased and opposition fighters had fled. The systematic execution of men taking no part in hostilities, women, children, and infants establishes that the objective was not to neutralize them to gain a military advantage under the laws of war, but to physically destroy this community.

Targeting a Substantial Part of the Group

Under international precedents, including the ICJ’s 2007 judgment in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro and the Krstić appeal judgment, the legal requirement concerning the destruction of a group “in part” is met when the targeted portion constitutes a substantial part of the group or has geographic significance for the survival of the group as a whole in a particular area.

The coastal Sunni enclaves in Tartous governorate constituted a vulnerable and geographically isolated minority. The destruction directed specifically at these enclaves also sought to eliminate the Sunni presence in that geographic area. As Ali Haidar, minister of state for national reconciliation affairs, publicly stated, the state sought to prevent the opposition from establishing a foothold in a highly sensitive area that was the principal stronghold of the Alawite community and Syria’s only outlet to the sea. The strategic intent to permanently alter the area’s demographic composition through physical destruction and forcible displacement is consistent with the concept of “geographically limited genocide” recognized in the Krstić case.

Establishing Specific Criminal Intent, or Genocidal Intent

The systematic pattern after hostilities ended: Executions were carried out following the withdrawal of opposition fighters, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Entire families were annihilated, severing family lines. The destruction had a geographic and strategic character, with Sunni enclaves in coastal areas being cleansed to change the region’s demographic composition.

The discriminatory pattern of destruction: Sunni areas were exclusively targeted, while neighboring Christian areas were spared.

The destruction of remains to achieve total annihilation: The systematic piling up and burning of bodies, including the burning of at least 25 to 45 bodies  inside Azzam’s mobile phone shop in al-Bayda’s main square, follows patterns of genocide-related concealment and desecration of victims addressed in the Blagojević and Jokić case. This prevents victims from being identified and seeks to physically erase the group’s presence from the area.

The documented factual evidence and the context of the massacres in al-Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa satisfy the legal criteria set out in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention:

• The target: A protected religious group, Sunni Muslims in al-Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa, distinguishable both subjectively and objectively from neighboring populations.
• The material element: Mass killings under Article II(a), severe physical and psychological torture under Article II(b), and the deliberate imposition of destructive living conditions and forcible displacement under Article II(c).
• Specific criminal intent: This is evident in the execution of noncombatant men, women, children, and infants; the selective restriction of destruction to the Sunni population; the timing of the massacres after hostilities; and the explicit strategic intent to cleanse a targeted geographic area.

These atrocities are not merely war crimes or crimes against humanity. They constitute genocide under international law, imposing a legal obligation on the Syrian judiciary to prosecute all those responsible, including direct perpetrators, instigators, those who issued orders, and those who failed to ensure accountability, extending up to Bashar al-Assad, rather than reducing the crime to a single defendant such as Ali Kayali. This obligation arises under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Syria is a party to the convention and is bound by all its provisions, including criminalizing and prosecuting planning, incitement, and participation. The prohibition of genocide is also a peremptory norm of general international law, from which no state may derogate or exempt itself, even if it has not ratified the convention. All states are therefore obliged to prevent and punish this crime.