Mazen Darwish (head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression) — interview with Al Majalla (post-Assad-fall, late 2024 / early 2025): a national transitional-justice framework "with accountability at its core" is imperative to prevent vengeance and renewed civil war, but must be objective and "steer clear of the pitfalls of victor's justice."

The absence of accountability, I believe, would open the door to widespread acts of individual vengeance, plunging Syrian society into instability and potentially even civil war. Therefore, establishing a comprehensive national framework for transitional justice, with accountability at its core, is imperative.

accountability must be approached objectively and be part of a national consensus, steering clear of the pitfalls of victor's justice or selective, retaliatory measures. A balanced and measured approach is key—one that delivers justice to victims from all sides while ensuring major perpetrators and violators are held to account. This pathway should extend beyond criminal accountability to include measures such as political disqualification and banning some individuals from participating in public or political life in Syria.

[Source is English (Al Majalla, an exclusive interview); the remarks may be Al Majalla's English rendering of an Arabic interview. PROVENANCE FLAG: the page exposed no machine-readable publication date (the only date on the page, 13 January 2022, is a photo caption from the Koblenz trial, NOT the interview date); from its content — discussing the fall of the Assad regime, Sednaya prison, and the exhumation of mass graves — the interview dates to the immediate post-Assad-fall period (after 8 December 2024, late 2024 / early 2025); published_date left null pending confirmation.] Declared positions of Mazen Darwish — a prominent Syrian human-rights lawyer, founder and president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), himself detained under the Assad regime, and for over a decade a leading advocate for documenting Syrian regime crimes and pursuing accountability (including the landmark Koblenz universal-jurisdiction trial in Germany). He argues that a national transitional-justice process "with accountability as its central pillar" is essential to civil peace — that the absence of accountability would "open the door to widespread acts of individual vengeance" and risk renewed civil war — while insisting that accountability be "objective," part of a national consensus, and "steer clear of the pitfalls of victor's justice or selective, retaliatory measures," delivering justice to victims "from all sides" and extending beyond criminal trials to political disqualification of major perpetrators. (He also holds that Bashar al-Assad should be extradited and publicly tried in a free Syria as "integral to Syria's recovery... and national reconciliation.") This is the Syrian secular, civil-society, RULE-OF-LAW / transitional-justice pole — distinct from the new government's framing (Asaad al-Shaibani) and from revenge or sectarian impulses. [Axes: democracy / rule-of-law (transitional justice, accountability, due process), civil-liberties (free expression), regime-stance (accountability for the former regime; lustration / political disqualification), reconciliation.]