MOSCOW. Historic legal action in Russia by three NGOs against the mercenaries of the Wagner group. Three NGOs filed a complaint against the opaque private paramilitary organization, which is headed by an oligarch very close to the Kremlin, Evgenij Prigozhin: they denounce the death of a Syrian, who was allegedly tortured and beheaded, which took place in 2017; the purpose of the complaint is obviously to raise attention to a group with obscure outlines. The denunciation of a possible “war crime” is unlikely to lead to a trial in Russia, but it is symbolic because it falls on the tenth anniversary of the Syrian conflict, a conflict whose fate was decided by the intervention of Moscow in support of President Bashar al-Assad .
In a statement, the three NGOs – the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, the International Federation for Human Rights and the Russian organization Memorial – claim to have identified and “produced evidence” that Wagner’s men tortured and beheaded the man, accused of being a deserter from the Syrian army, in 2017. The complaint against Wagner follows those filed in recent years by a hundred Syrian refugees against senior officials of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Germany, Austria , Norway or Sweden. So far, Wagner’s men have always escaped prosecution but the owner of the private military organization, Prigojine, is subject to European and American sanctions; and is also wanted by the FBI. Close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigojine has always denied any role in Wagner. But for the three NGOs there is no doubt: Wagner is made up of “Russian fighters acting under the effective control of Russia” and implicated “in serious violations of human rights against civilians”, in Syria and elsewhere.