6 days ago - The Federal Bureau of Investigation ... 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 ...

December 20, 2024 - Between 2011 and 2024, extensive violations on a vast scale by the former Bashar Assad’s regime and its allies, led to the internal displacement of approximately 6.8 million Syrians, with another seven million Syrian refugees seeking asylum abroad, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

4 weeks ago - A former Syrian intelligence chief in the ​city of Raqqa has been found guilty of torture and sexual abuse of opponents of the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, at a court in Vienna, Austria.

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 ...

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.

March 24, 2022 - 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.

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).

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.

4 weeks ago - Khaled al-Halabi, a former intelligence commander under the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and Musab Abu Rukbah, a former police commander, were sentenced for crimes committed against detainees during the democracy protests in the city of Raqqa between 2011 and 2013. Both men were sentenced to eight years in prison. Mr. al-Halabi was convicted of torture among other charges. Mr. Abu Rukbah was convicted on charges of aggravated coercion and sexual coercion among multiple charges. Before the verdict, Tatiana Urdaneta Wittek, co-founder of the Centre for the Enforcement of Human Rights International, which represented 17 of the Syrian witnesses, said, “Clearly the outcome of the trial was that the systematic torture by the Syrian secret service was depicted in this courtroom in the statements of the witnesses and became very vivid.” · “And this is the historic aspect for Austria,” she said.

3 weeks ago - At least two high-profile figures ... issued an arrest warrant for former president Bashar al-Assad on charges of murder and torture....

2 days ago - After Hafez al-Assad's death, his son and successor Bashar al-Assad inherited the existing personality cult, with the party hailing him as the "Young Leader" and "Hope of the People." Drawing influence from North Korea's hereditary leadership model, official propaganda in Syria ascribed divine features to the Assad family and revered the Assad patriarchs as the founding fathers of modern Syria. In 2011, the United States, European Union, and most Arab League countries called for Assad to resign following the crackdown on Arab Spring protesters during the events of the Syrian Revolution, which

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.

December 4, 2025 - Similar evidence has been important in other cases, including when the U.S. Justice Department unsealed indictments against Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, two former high-ranking Syrian officials, charging them under 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 remain outstanding, for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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.

December 15, 2024 - Not only is he suspected of using poison gas on his own citizens, but under his rule more than 15,000 people have been tortured to death since the civil war began in 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).

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

1 month ago - The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it is the first time charges of murder as crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 have been brought. It is thought to be the first time someone alleged to have been part of ex-President Bashar al-Assad's security forces has been prosecuted in the UK for crimes relating to the Syrian civil war. A trial on whether Salem did the acts he is accused of will take place in 2027, although the defendant will not take part in the proceedings. At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Emilie Pottle said: "He was tasked with quelling civilian protests against the regime and the defendant ordered officers under his command to shoot protesters and he himself shot protesters. "As a result some individuals died and the defendant is charged with their murder as a crime against humanity." ... Salem Michel Al-Salem, accused of crimes ...

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 ...

January 22, 2025 - Hopes are rising that, with the support of the United Nations, the architects of the brutal former regime of Bashar al Assad in Syria will eventually be held accountable for their crimes.

April 21, 2025 - French criminal investigative judges call for the arrest of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and three associates over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.