“Could a Syrian war criminal be attending Pain Olympics?”

Al-Aroub drew the attention of the London-based activist group Syrian British Consortium (SBC) when it was recently investigating possible war crimes committed by NUSS during anti-government protests between 2011 and 2013.

“With regards to such allegations, there are many other organizations, including the International Criminal Court, who are better placed to investigate whether they are true or not,” the IPC said in an emailed statement to DW.

A diplomatic source in the French government told DW on background that applications for the Paralympic Games are currently being processed and that these would be subject to the usual “administrative security investigations.”

Neither this kind of protest nor the Olympic organizers’ apparent reluctance to get involved is surprising, said Adam Scharpf, an assistant professor of political science at Copenhagen University, who researches how autocrats use sports for their own ends.

There is a long list of national committees banned from previous Olympics, including Germany and Japan after World War II, South Africa for some two decades under apartheid and Afghanistan because of the Taliban’s discrimination against women.

Most recently, sportspeople from Russia and Belarus may only attend as “internationally neutral athletes,” and there have also been calls to uninvite Israel due to the country’s ongoing actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

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