Commission for International Justice and Accountability

Commission for International Justice and Accountability
Type	Non-profit organisation
Logo
Founded	May 2011 / 2012
Founder(s)	William Wiley; ARK; Tsamota
Dissolved
Registration ID
Status	Active
Headquarters	Western Europe (exact location not publicly disclosed; operations reported in Lisbon)
Location	Europe
Area served	Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, Ukraine and other conflict zones
Services	Evidence collection, analysis and assistance to prosecutors
Registration
Key people	William Wiley (executive director); Stephen Rapp (chair)
Website	cijaonline.org
Remarks	Subject of OLAF fraud findings; critical reports allege intelligence contractor origins

{short description|Western-funded organisation collecting evidence on Syrian conflict; subject of fraud allegations and intelligence-link claims}}

Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) is a non-profit organisation that describes itself as dedicated to “collecting evidence… for the express purpose of furthering criminal justice efforts” in order to prevent the loss of material for domestic or international prosecutions.^[1] Critical reporting characterises it as a Western government-funded entity founded in 2011–2012 by contractors linked to MI6 and US intelligence veterans, focused on Syrian regime documentation, and later the subject of European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) investigations and allegations of evidence-handling irregularities.^[2]^[3]

Entrepreneurial justice briefing

A March 2021 briefing by Paul McKeigue for the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, titled “Entrepreneurial justice operations related to the Syrian conflict: role of The Commission for International Justice and Accountability and other businesses controlled by William Wiley,” examines CIJA and companies controlled by William Harry Wiley in the context of OLAF findings.^[4] The paper argues that CIJA originated as a spinout from a covert UK-led strategic communications programme supporting the Syrian opposition, that it is co-located with and shares personnel with Tsamota, that it has received more than €37 million from Western donors, and that OLAF uncovered fraud including false documents and irregular invoicing. It questions the neutrality of CIJA’s evidence, its affiliations with US and Western intelligence, and its collaboration with armed opposition groups, and concludes that its narrative of regime crimes contributed to delegitimising the Syrian government.^[4]

Key quotations from the briefing include:

“Wiley is a self-described ‘practitioner in the field of international criminal and humanitarian law’ who has no legal qualifications other than a master’s degree.”
“CIJA originated in a covert UK-led strategic communication programme to support the Syrian opposition, as a spinout from two companies: ARK (founded by the presumed MI6 officer Alistair Harris) and Tsamota (founded by Peter Nicholson, a British military intelligence officer).”
“CIJA has received more than €37 million by mid-2020 from donors including governments of the UK, Canada, the US, and the European Union.”
“Wiley has over the last ten years controlled at least ten companies in at least five jurisdictions, and is the sole director of most of these.”
“Two legal entities with the name CIJA have existed: one is a Stichting (foundation) still registered in the Netherlands. The other was registered from 2014 to 2017 at an address found to be fictitious by OLAF investigators.”
“Since 2016 Tsamota / CIJA’s physical location has been in Lisbon, though neither Tsamota nor CIJA are registered in Portugal as legal entitities.”
“In 2020 the EU’s Anti-Fraud office (OLAF) announced that their investigation of CIJA, Tsamota and ARK ‘uncovers fraud’, and that there had been ‘submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering’ in EU-funded projects.”
“OLAF recommended that the European Commission should recover €1.9 million of the €2 million originally awarded.”
“Wiley’s posting to Baghdad in 2005-2008 where he worked for an office of the US Embassy (the Regime Crimes Liaison Unit) indicates that the US government was prepared to entrust him with sensitive tasks.”
“CIJA’s ability to work with the most extreme armed opposition groups in the Syrian conflict to retrieve documents from opposition-held areas raises doubts about CIJA’s neutrality and commitment to human rights.”
“Wide publicity has been given to CIJA’s possession of what has been described as the ‘linch-pin’ of CIJA’s case against the Syrian government: a collection of documents recording the activity of the ‘Central Crisis Management Cell’ (CCMC).”
“CIJA has since 2015 prepared reports on the ‘Caesar affair’ – photographs of some 6000 deceased adult males taken up to August 2013 at Hospital 601, alleged to have been detained by Syrian security forces.”
“The funding of CIJA by donors has produced few indictments.”
“CIJA’s dissemination of a narrative of regime crimes has however contributed to delegitimizing the Syrian government and thus to laying the basis for sanctions and to the illegal US military occupation of Syrian territory.”
“Whilst we are an NGO and I never thought in a million years I’d ever run an NGO given my professional background, but I think it’s fair to say that we differ from most or any other human rights NGO in that there is real discipline in CIJA.” (Wiley)
“Our current donors include the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Demark, the Netherlands, and Norway.” (Chris Engels)
“CIJA has thus far received fifty-nine grants from eleven donors, including five from the European Union. The total value of these grants is EUR 37.5m.” (Wiley, May 2020 letter)
“In 2011, in response to allegations of gross human rights violations committed by protagonists in the Syrian conflict, ARK and its justice sector partner Tsamota supported the establishment of the Syrian Commission for Justice and Accountability (SCJA).” (ARK report)
“Even a war crimes suspect is treated better than how we were treated by Olaf.” (Nerma Jelacic)
“By design, CIJA has a strong relationship with US law enforcement.” (Engels)
“Tsamota has no stable structure and employs only consultants some of them with oral contracts.” (OLAF)
“The project marks a new development in international justice: the contemporaneous gathering of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law, whether conducted by regime forces or members of armed opposition or Islamist groups, whilst the conflict is ongoing.” (ARK report)

Origins and structure

CIJA was established in May 2011 (or 2012 according to some accounts) by the NATO-state contractors ARK and Tsamota. Its stated early objective was to train Syrian “investigators, lawyers, and activists in basic international criminal and humanitarian law,” create regional investigative teams in Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Idlib equipped with field kits, and gather evidence of alleged war crimes by Syrian government forces for a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.”^[2] William Wiley (also known as Bill Wiley), a Canadian lawyer who had worked on the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals and on the trial of Saddam Hussein, serves as director/executive director. Stephen Rapp, a former US diplomat, has been described as chair.^[2]

Wiley has stated that CIJA was created to address the tendency of international justice mechanisms to begin evidence collection too late. The organisation claims to have secured almost 1.2 million pages of documents from the Syrian regime and Islamic State, interviewed thousands of witnesses, and supported prosecutions in multiple countries.^[1]^[5] It states that it works with dozens of law-enforcement and prosecutorial bodies and is funded by Western governments including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the European Union.^[6]

Operations and evidence collection

According to leaked ARK files cited by Klarenberg, CIJA “through expert training, effective equipment provision and a commitment to the truth were able to ensure that when the conflict ends, the raw material of a post-conflict war crimes process is ready for trial.” It claimed to have seized thousands of kilograms of contemporaneous documentation, hundreds of thousands of pages of evidential material, and thousands of videos, hand-carried out of Syria. Wiley told The New Yorker in 2016 that “we burn enormous sums of money moving this stuff.”^[2]

Wiley has said CIJA worked with every armed opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” Critical reporting notes material obtained from Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS and reliance on rebel groups and couriers for logistics, with documents moved in “crappy suitcases.”^[2]^[7]

Stephen Rapp told CBS in February 2021: “Now we have 800,000 pages of original documents, signed and sealed with original signatures going all the way up to Assad that document this whole strategy… We see reports back about ‘well, we’ve got a real problem here, there are too many corpses stacking up, somebody’s gonna have to help us with that’… Everything is handled in this sort of totalitarian system where they frankly think they can get away with things… they were almost stupid… they created evidence.”^[2]

CIJA material has been used in German prosecutions of Anwar Raslan (sentenced to life in 2022) and Eyad Gharib (sentenced to 4.5 years in 2021). Klarenberg notes that Central Crisis Management Cell records described as a “linchpin” of the case against the regime in fact recorded instructions to protect protesters, and that trials featured contradictory witness testimony.^[2]

Funding and OLAF investigations

CIJA has received tens of millions of dollars from Western governments. The Globe and Mail reported annual funding of about $8 million, with Canada providing $3 million a year from 2015.^[8]

In March 2020 the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) accused CIJA of “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering” relating to an EU Rule of Law project in Syria. OLAF is reported to have raided CIJA premises in 2015 and found no operations. Subsequent findings in 2017 and 2020 against CIJA and the related firm Tsamota included falsified documentation, questionable payments, and a €1.834 million Iraq legal-education contract where no stable structure existed. OLAF’s 2020 ruling stated: “while the project partners claimed to support the rule of law, they were in fact violating regulations on a massive scale, with false documents, irregular invoices, and self-enrichment.”^[2]^[3]

Wiley has accused OLAF of being “engaged in a concerted effort to destroy” the organisation and has speculated about “malign foreign interference.” An August 2024 internal paper titled “The EU OLAF Campaign” claimed EU officials “served the interests of the Russian Federation and [its] Western proxies and useful idiots” and that OLAF displayed “extraordinary degrees of incompetence and vindictiveness.”^[3]

Allegations of intelligence links and retaliatory operations

Critical accounts state that CIJA was founded by MI6 and US intelligence veterans. ARK, founded by former MI6 officer Alistair Harris, is described as having conducted covert psychological warfare for British intelligence in Syria from the start of the crisis, training “citizen journalists” and supporting opposition media. Tsamota, directed by Wiley, is a security and justice consultancy; Wiley’s earlier role on the Saddam Hussein trial was imposed by the US embassy’s Regime Crimes Liaison Office after CIA interrogation of the defendant.^[2]^[3]

The Grayzone reported that in 2024 Wiley solicited MI6 operative Ian Baharie for a planned sting on a former employee, Cinzia Verzeletti, whom he accused of being an OLAF source. Internal notes proposed offering immunity for disclosure while warning of “financially-ruinous civil liability” and a “criminal offence pursuant to Belgian penal law,” and stated that Verzeletti should be “left in no doubt the difficult position in which she is about to find herself… can and will be made significantly more serious, legally and reputationally speaking, in the event of her non-cooperation.” Wiley sought assistance from “old crew” via ARK’s Alistair Harris and referred to “the mob at home” (possibly CIA) having concluded that Russians were behind the OLAF action. He also proposed gathering HUMINT on OLAF officials to secure “a discrete settlement” covering “substantial financial losses.”^[3]

In a 2023–2024 Swedish case against Walid Zaytun a court acquitted the defendant, ruling that a CIJA dossier was “essentially worthless” with “extremely limited probative value” and that witnesses “may have deliberately provided incorrect information,” some obtained via offers of visas to Europe.^[3]