As Canadians see terrifying videos of civilian targets in Ukraine being attacked by Russia, they might start to wonder if what they’re witnessing is a war crime.
Videos have emerged of a maternity hospital being bombed so hard the ground shook two kilometres away, and of a refugee escape route hit by missiles every 10 minutes. The devastating images continue toxjmtzyw pile up as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only intensifies.
According to investigator Bill Wiley, determining whether these acts of violence are war crimes is challenging, but not impossible.
Born in Toronto, Wiley’s more than 20-year pedigree reads like a who’s who of global atrocities. He helped investigate war crimes in Iraq, Syria, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
He was involved in the case against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He has more than 1.3 million documents from Northern Syrian political offices stacked neatly in a secure location, which helped get a rare conviction for the torture of political prisoners.
Wiley founded the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. He and his team are ready to start sleuthing for evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, if needed. But, he warns it’s a marathon, not a sprint. A proper investigation can take years, even decades, although it’s easy to jump to conclusions.
“A popular misconception is that dead civilians translate readily into an easily built in prosecutorial case,” Wiley says, “and it’s really not the situation.”
It took Wiley and his team more than seven years of work to see a conviction in the Syrian war. While he’s seen a lot of brutally graphic evidence in his more than 20-year career, Wiley says he’s horrified by what he’s seen happen in Ukraine.
He says that at a distance, “it certainly appears that there’s a deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure … and that would constitute a war crime.”
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Light enters through the damaged roof of an old cinema and restaurant after a Russian bombing in Baryshivka, east of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
