When Justice Is Out of Reach
Accountability is a long way off for Bashar al-Assad. But the world can still preserve the memories of what has happened in Syria.
Some years ago, I was given an assignment by Vanity Fair to track down war criminals and former dictators who, despite being ousted from power, hadn’t yet seen justice. As I hunted down their villas on the French Riviera, one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the world, or in the cobbled side streets of Paris’s 16th arrondissement, I was reminded, not for the first time, that after war or upheaval, bad guys rarely face a timely reckoning.
Instead, they can live in luxury—like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who had the run of enormous private properties in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before his death in the resort
