Prosecution cases have been prepared against president and senior members of his regime for possible war crimes tribunal 
 
 A three-year operation to smuggle official documents out of Syria has produced enough evidence to indict President Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior members of his regime, according to the findings of an international investigative commission. 
 
 The prosecution cases against the Syrian leaders focus on their role in the suppression of the protests that triggered the conflict in 2011. Tens of thousands of suspected dissidents were detained, and many of them were tortured and killed in the Syrian prison system. 
 
 The evidence has been compiled for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), made up of investigators and legal experts who formerly worked on war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and for the international criminal court (ICC). 
 
 They worked with a team of 50 Syrian investigators who have carried out the dangerous task of smuggling regime documents out of the country. So far one investigator has been killed, another severely wounded, and several have been detained and tortured by the regime. 
 
 The commission is funded by western states including the UK, US, the EU, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Canada and Denmark. 
 
 The evidence has been collected and prosecution cases have been prepared in anticipation of a war crimes tribunal being established in the future. Russia has used its UN security council veto to block any investigation of the Assad regime in the international criminal court or the creation of an ad hoc court for Syria. However, a string of recent military setbacks and infighting in the upper echelons of the Syrian government have increased the chances that Assad could eventually fall and his regime be brought to justice. 
 
 Syria’s truth smugglers | Julian Borger Read more 
 
 The CIJA is currently investigating the conduct of the war by both the regime and extreme opposition groups, but it has already completed the preparation of three prosecution cases. The first focuses on the institution at the top of the regime’s chain of command, the Central Crisis Management Cell (CCMC), and names, among others, Assad, Mohammad al-Shaar, the minister of the interior, and Mohammed Said Bekheitan, an assistant secretary of the Ba’ath party and the head of the CCMC in the first six months of the operation, from March to the end of September 2011. 
 
 The second case centres on the organ directly below the CCMC, the National Security Bureau (NSB), which includes the heads of the four main intelligence and security agencies. The third case involves the Deir ez-Zor security committee, chaired by the provincial head of the Ba’ath party, which also controlled the intelligence agencies in the neighbouring Raqqa governorate. 
 
 The remaining 22 officials named in the CIJA prosecution cases have been identified to governments but not yet publicly. 
 
 Earlier inquiries have implicated the Syrian regime in war crimes, including a UN commission in December 2013 which found that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state”. 
 
 However, the head of the CIJA, Bill Wiley, said its work was distinct as it had produced legal briefs, including a summary of the facts, supporting evidence, and applicable law, essentially ready to go to court. 
 
 “The UN commission is not concerned with individual criminal responsibility, so it is not preparing dossiers for prosecution. That’s not their fault, it’s just not their mandate. They have a broader brush, including social, minority and women’s rights. We are focused on international criminal humanitarian law and individual criminal responsibility,” Wiley said. 
 
 The CIJA’s findings are based primarily on captured documentary evidence. In its headquarters in a western capital, which cannot be identified for security reasons, it has accumulated half a million pages of orders and reports sent up and down the chain of command from the CCMC to the governorates and districts, ordering mass arrests and detentions for offences as nebulous as “discussing the events in a negative manner”. 
 
 The CIJA has a team of investigators in each governorate, who have sought to collect paperwork from the regime’s military, security and intelligence agencies, usually after government buildings have been abandoned or seized by opposition fighters. The documents then have to be smuggled out, often through checkpoints controlled by the army or by extremist opposition groups likely to detain or kill anyone found working for a western organisation. 
 
 The chief investigator, Adel (a pseudonym), has come close to being killed on several occasions. “The work has caused a lot of stress in my family,” he said in an interview in a Gulf capital. “There are long absences and constant fear. But I still believe in the cause of justice. I hope one day to see a court that would try the senior leadership and hold it accountable for the crimes committed.” 
 
 The CIJA has also carried out nearly 400 interviews, many of them with insider defectors, but Wiley – a Canadian former infantry officer who served as an investigator on the Yugoslav and Rwandan courts, as well as on the ICC – said the paperwork was the starting point for the CIJA cases against the regime. 
 
 “The big thing from the beginning was document acquisition and smuggling,” he said. “That was the key.” 
 
 A separate investigation into war crimes committed by extremist opposition groups relies more on insider witness testimony as well as analysis of publicly available material including propaganda and witness videos, more than 470,000 of which have been downloaded and archived by the CIJA. They are being analysed and annotated by Syrian refugees working for the commission. 
 
 Several western judiciaries have been in contact with the CIJA seeking support for prosecutions on both sides where there is a local link to a suspect. But a comprehensive accounting of regime conduct would most likely have to wait for a change of government in Damascus or a change of heart in the UN security council. ||||| Signs are seen on one of the containers carrying precursors to sarin gas on the deck of the Ark Futura, a Danish-chartered cargo vessel which is assisting in the effort to extract Syrian chemical weapons from the country, in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea May 13, 2014. 
 
 Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard speaks to media in front of containers containing precursor agents to the nerve gas sarin onboard the Ark Futura, a Danish cargo ship docked in international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea May 13, 2014. 
 
 AMSTERDAM International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday. 
 
 Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents, the sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because the information is confidential. 
 
 "This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin," one diplomatic source said. "They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding." 
 
 In 2013, the United States threatened military intervention against Syria's government after sarin gas attacks in August of that year killed hundreds of residents in Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus. 
 
 But the Damascus government forestalled foreign intervention by agreeing to a U.S.- and Russian-brokered deal under which it joined the OPCW, admitting to having a chemicals weapons programme and promising to eliminate it. 
 
 The government of President Bashar al-Assad last year handed over 1,300 tonnes of chemical arms to a joint U.N.-OPCW mission for destruction. But Damascus has denied using sarin or any chemical weapons in battle during Syria's continuing civil war. 
 
 The diplomatic sources said the sarin and VX nerve samples were taken from the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, a government agency where Western intelligence agencies say Syria developed biological and chemical weapons. 
 
 Asked about the diplomats' account, OPCW spokesman Peter Sawczak said: "Obviously we are working to clarify Syria's declaration. I cannot discuss any details of that process, but in due course the assessment team will issue a report." 
 
 CHLORINE GAS ATTACKS 
 
 An OPCW fact-finding mission has been investigating allegations of dozens of recent chlorine gas attacks in Syrian villages but is being refused access to the sites by the Assad government, the diplomatic sources said. 
 
 The finding of VX and sarin supports assertions by Western governments that Assad withheld some of his stockpile, or did not disclose the full extent of Syria's chemical capability or arsenal to the OPCW, according to diplomats and analysts. 
 
 OPCW inspectors have been to Syria eight times to verify the accuracy of the details of the chemical weapons programme provided in an initial report, but keep returning with more questions than answers, the diplomats said. 
 
 Under the deal with Washington and Moscow, Syria agreed to permanently and completely destroy its chemical weapons programme and cannot use poison gas in warfare. 
 
 But the OPCW, which is not mandated to assign blame, said chlorine has been used "systematically and repeatedly" as a weapon in Syria after Damascus handed over its declared toxic stockpile. 
 
 Syria has begun destroying a dozen chemical weapons production and storage sites, but also last year added several new facilities it had not initially disclosed to the OPCW. 
 
 The United States wants a team of United Nations investigators to determine who is to blame for the more recent chlorine attacks in a bid to pave the way for U.N. Security Council action against those responsible. 
 
 Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British expert on biological and chemical weapons, believes that Syrian government forces are the only ones who could have carried out the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attacks in Ghouta because they were mounted on a large scale and professionally executed. 
 
 "This unequivocally proves there was sarin in Syria. If the OPCW possesses this evidence, it is absolutely another nail in this coffin," he said. 
 
 (Editing by Mark Heinrich) ||||| A Western diplomat briefed on the findings by the inspectors from the global Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that while there was no clear evidence of new use or production of forbidden chemicals, “the strong suspicion is they are retaining stockpiles which are being held back.” 
 
 “This, and the open defiance in using prohibited chlorine bombs, is indicative of bad faith from the beginning,” the diplomat said. 
 
 A violation of the deal struck to eliminate Syria’s chemical arsenal would undermine President Obama’s single claim to policy success in Syria, where four years of war has displaced nearly half the country, killed more than 200,000 people and shown no sign of abating. It could also embarrass Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful military and diplomatic patron. 
 
 Already there was mounting evidence that Mr. Assad’s forces had violated the terms of the international treaty banning use of chemical weapons — and signed as part of the deal facilitated by Washington and Moscow — by dropping jerry-built chlorine bombs on insurgent-held areas. While the Syrian government has denied using chlorine or any chemical as a weapon, only the government has access to the helicopters that witnesses say are being used, and rescue workers say the pace of such attacks has increased in some areas. 
 
 Now, inspectors are trying to determine the significance of the new findings of small amounts of banned agents, which do not necessarily indicate a lingering weapons program and were described by some diplomats as being perhaps less troublesome than the charges that the Syrian government is dropping barrel bombs loaded with chlorine. The inspectors, whose last tour ended on April 3, are expected to seek answers from Syrian officials during a visit beginning Sunday.
– Documents smuggled out of Syria over three years contain enough evidence to put President Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior officials in front of a war crimes tribunal, investigators say. The Commission for International Justice and Accountability, working with 50 Syrian investigators, managed to get its hands on half a million pages of reports from government offices calling for mass arrests and detentions for crimes including "discussing the events in a negative manner" during the 2011 protests that sparked the conflict, reports the Guardian. At least one investigator was killed and several others were detained and tortured while pursuing the documents, which were followed up with 400 interviews. Three prosecution cases already prepared name Assad, Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar, and assistant secretary of the Ba'ath party Mohammed Said Bekheitan, along with the country's Central Crisis Management Cell and National Security Bureau. "The work has caused a lot of stress in my family," says the chief investigator, identified only by a pseudonym. "There are long absences and constant fear. But I still believe in the cause of justice." Russia has so far vetoed any attempt by the UN security council to try the Assad regime in the international criminal court. However, sources say investigators have also uncovered undeclared traces of chemical weapons, including sarin and ricin, at three military locations in Syria. That may suggest Assad violated a 2013 deal negotiated by Russia and the US in which he agreed to dismantle Syria's chemical arsenal, though there is no proof that the chemicals were used after the agreement was signed, the New York Times reports. "This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin," a source tells Reuters, noting Syria has failed to provide a "satisfactory explanation about this finding." The UN is reviewing claims that the Assad regime is also using chlorine bombs.