William Molinié, edited by Romain Rouillard
While a first trial for “war crime” targeting a young Russian soldier opened on Wednesday in kyiv, a French intelligence officer explains to Europe 1 how delivering fair justice can be tricky in such a context. . Gathering real evidence of abuse can be challenging.
What place for truth in the war in Ukraine? This is the question that arises with the opening of an unprecedented trial this Wednesday in kyiv. That of a young 21-year-old Russian soldier who pleaded guilty to “war crime”, a first in this conflict. He admitted to killing a 62-year-old Ukrainian. Enora Chame, a French intelligence officer, who uses this name because her identity is protected, describes how difficult it can be to collect indisputable evidence of abuses in the field of war.
The only French officer to have been selected to survey Syria under the UN banner, in 2012, she acquired a keen eye on the mechanisms of manipulation of opinions that she sees today at work around the Ukrainian conflict. . “The cauldron of pathos in which we bathe today seems to me quite characteristic of the beginnings of war when each wants to prove that the other is worse, while there are abuses on both sides”, begins- she.
“To render credible justice, it must be neutral and dispassionate”
How can a fair trial be rendered under these conditions? “This type of justice is done hot. It is done in emotion, it is done to the maximum of the suffering of the people who are there. And to render credible justice, it must be neutral and dispassionate”, argues Enora Chamé. This role could be that of UN observers, who for the moment have not been deployed in Ukraine. “I think they would have a lot of difficulty being heard. Which again is understandable. People are hurting a lot. They don’t want to have someone who in their mind doesn’t get wet, so who is not brave, that’s what people think. While observers say that we can not accuse anyone, anything. There are consequences behind.”
Enora Chame recounted her documentation work in a book When the shadow advances published by Mareuil. It reveals the shadow of the war of course, that also of the international community. Because, she concludes, “the more she invests in a problem, the less the solution is in the country concerned”.