The lazy answer is that he’s still in power, and he’s won the war [ https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-the-armed-conflict-in-Syria-will-become-a-forever-war/answers/270319752 ], so you want to try him in his own territory? Be my guest. If you’re thinking about dumping Assad in The Hague, Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, where you can try stuff like war crimes (the country does appear to have signed the Rome Statute, but was smart enough to not ratify it). %3E Green denotes countries that are party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These are countries where you can be tried by the ICC for committing a variety of atrocities, including war crimes. Hypothetically, the Syrian government can be brought to court for war crimes if the crime in question somehow spills over into an adjoining country where the ICC does have jurisdiction; in this case, Jordan. That’s how Myanmar, a non-party, ended up being investigated by the ICC, because the crimes it allegedly committed against the Rohingya population once spilled over into neighboring Bangladesh, which is a party to the Rome Statute and therefore allows the ICC to have jurisdiction. https://www.icc-cpi.int/bangladesh-myanmar Some lawyers tried using the Myanmar/Bangladesh precedent to bring Assad to the ICC by piggybacking on Syrian refugees who had fled to Jordan, though I’m not familiar with the details of the crimes they want Assad jailed for (i.e. did they occur within Jordanian territory, or were the refugees just in Jordan?), which would determine whether the ICC can look into Assad. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47483714 In any case, whether the ICC decides to pick up this case at all is another question. It’s already rigged in that it can only pick on smaller fish (good luck investigating the US, even if it’s in Afghanistan), but there are so many powerful stakeholders in the Syrian conflict that the ICC — which isn’t exactly a powerful institution — is better off leaving all punishment to future historians. Or some European countries that practice “universal jurisdiction [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction ],” a.k.a. wasting court paper on non-citizens accused of crimes outside of your country but will never visit your country anyway, because violating other countries’ sovereignty to look good at home is a cool thing to do. Answer from Anonymous on quora.com