HomeStatementsSummary of the Assad Regime’s Crimes Against the Syrian People Over the... ... The Hague – the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) released a statement briefly summarizing the staggering human and material losses inflicted by Bashar Assad’s regime on the Syrian society and the Syrian state in the last 14 years.

3 weeks ago - Brutal repression, human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Assad government throughout the course of the conflict led to international condemnation and widespread calls to convict Bashar al-Assad in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

2 days ago - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that at least 10 European citizens were tortured by the Assad government while detained during the Syrian civil war, potentially leaving Assad open to prosecution by individual European countries for war crimes. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated in December 2013 that UN investigations directly implicated Bashar al-Assad in perpetrating crimes against humanity and pursuing an extermination strategy developed "at the highest level of government, including the head of state."

The Syrian government led by president Bashar al-Assad is responsible for systematic and widespread torture targeting opponents and activists not only as a reaction to the protests in 2011. There are currently only a few avenues left to prosecute international crimes committed in Syria.

Bashar Al-Assad is guilty of war crimes. To ignore these crimes is to call into question the possibility of a lasting peace. This is why France opposes efforts at normalisation. Syria’s reintegration into the Arab League will not put an end to external interference or to regional instability.

1 week ago - Fourteen people are on trial, charged with crimes related to an outbreak of sectarian violence under the new government. The abuses of the old Assad regime still await a reckoning.

December 20, 2024 - Foremost was his repeated usage of chemical weapons against civilian populations.2 Investigations led by the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found over 300 instances of such attacks by pro-regime forces, with ...

December 9, 2024 - This included attacks with chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and other war crimes, as well as murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination that amount to crimes against humanity.

October 28, 2025 - In 2023, French prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Al-Hassan, Assad and others for complicity in war crimes over the use of chemical weapons against civilians in August 2013.

Since 2011, a community of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been assembling vast evidence of the Syrian state’s crimes against humanity, with the aim of supporting international investigations and prosecutions. The authors serve as pro bono advisory board members of one such major NGO, the non-profit Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). CIJA has amassed more than one million pages of internal Syrian regime records which show in exhaustive detail how Bashar al-Assad and his intelligence and security agencies have conducted—and are still conducting—a deliberate, systematic, and centrally planned campaign of mass murder and torture to keep Assad in power.

Similar evidence has been important ... the War Crimes Act with conspiracy to commit cruel and inhuman treatment of civilian detainees, including U.S. citizens. French courts, too, have issued thirteen arrest warrants against former Syrian officials, including for Bashar al-Assad himself, which ...

July 14, 2021 - Last March brought the 10th anniversary of the popular uprising that began Syria's civil war. The Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has gassed the innocent, bombed hospitals and schools, and made thousands disappear.

On 24 May the Paris Judicial Court sentenced in their absence senior Syrian officials Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud for complicity in crimes against humanity and one offence that constituted a war crime. On 26 June the Paris Court of Appeal upheld arrest warrants issued against Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad and two senior Syrian military officials on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes for the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta and Douma in August 2013.

February 6, 2025 - An indictment was unsealed today in the Northern District of Illinois charging two high-ranking Syrian officials under former President Bashar al-Assad with war crimes. The indictment charges the former Syrian intelligence officials with engaging in a conspiracy to commit cruel and inhuman treatment of civilian detainees, including U.S. citizens, during the course of the Syrian

December 13, 2024 - Torture, executions, chemical attacks on civilians, ethnic cleansing, bombing of residential areas, using famine as a weapon of war... The litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime appers to be endless.

2 days ago - A photo analysis revealed grave human rights violations at Assad's prisons in Syria. It found that some of the doctors who worked at a military hospital where violations were reported now practice in Germany.

June 26, 2024 - They alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed and that a French court could therefore prosecute individuals under the legal concept of universal jurisdiction. Last November, the judges agreed and issued arrest warrants for Mr Assad; his brother Maher, who leads the Syrian army’s fourth armoured division; General Ghassan Abbas, director of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC); and General Bassam al-Hassan, a presidential adviser and liaison officer with the SSRC.

December 10, 2024 - For nearly 14 years the Syrian people have suffered unimaginable horrors as the government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, perpetrated crimes against humanity and war crimes, brazenly violating countless international norms and treaties. For millions of Syrians the overthrow of the Assad ...

With a unique trove of primary sources, scholars trace Assad’s chain of command directing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.