Gareth Browne

speaker

160 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Gareth Browne’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Intelligence from The Economist · Equal before the law? Transitional justice in Syria · 18 May 2026 podcast

And that has angered people because some of these.

People are also closely associated with some of the worst crimes of the last 15 years.

And all of this anger is not just an emotion or a sentiment, but you can see it bubbling up, especially in places outside of Damascus.

Reprisal killings, sectarian attacks, people really taking the law into their own hands because their neighbor wronged them many years ago.

And I think that is a key driver of why these trials are happening.

What's happening now?

The government knows that if it isn't seen to be doing something about transitional justice, this kind of street level vengeance is only going to get worse and destabilise the country.

What the judges kind of leading this trial have said is that they are going to use international law and treaties to essentially plug in the gaps.

So where they don't have laws that are appropriate on the statute book.

They'll use things like the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute, and basically apply them as Syrian law.

Now, when you speak to lawyers and legal experts, some are quite excited and some are quite nervous.

There is a chance for the Syrian judicial system to do something really dynamic and really pioneering when it comes to trying some of these war crimes.

But I think there's also this worry that

the legal basis isn't that sound.

But Syria's new friends in the international community are watching closely, particularly in Europe, in the US, Canada, places like that.

And they don't want this to be a a show trial.

And the basis of Shar's new government, it's not democratic, but it is

built on some form of legitimacy and I think he knows that that legitimacy could be swayed one way or another, depending on whether these trials are seen as a success or a failure internationally.

One thing that does come through when you speak to people involved in the trial is that they're not going to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Thank you, Jason.

Showing 141–160 of 160 · page 8 of 8