United Nations human rights investigators said on Monday they had drawn up a new secret list of Syrians and military units suspected of committing war crimes who ought to be prosecuted.
The independent investigators, led by Paulo Pinheiro, said they had gathered "a formidable and extraordinary body of evidence" and urged the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
"Gross human rights violations have grown in number, in pace and in scale," Pinheiro told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. "There is no statute of limitations on these crimes."
He did not say if any Syrian rebels were among the names on the list, which updated a confidential one his team submitted to U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay in February.
Pinheiro presented the team's latest report, issued a month ago, saying Syrian government forces and allied militia have committed war crimes including murder and torture of civilians in what appears to be a state-directed policy.
More than 20,000 people have been killed in the 18-month-old conflict, 1.2 million are uprooted within Syria and more than 250,000 have fled abroad, the United Nations says.