Justice in Syria

Clear and analytic news

Since the fall of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the issue of justice in Syria has been in the world news headlines. The International Criminal Court (ICC) does not have jurisdiction to deal with mass crimes perpetrated by the ousted regime, while since 2019, European courts have taken the lead under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. The first historic trial, that of Anwar Raslan in Germany, was followed by others, notably in the Netherlands, and by lawsuits launched against around sixty alleged perpetrators in Sweden, Belgium, Austria or France. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued “provisional measures” against the practice of torture in Syria. A UN mechanism has been tasked with documenting these crimes. Today, European prosecutors who are working on these cases, Syrian lawyers and all the organisations that have been mobilised for years are at the forefront of this fight for justice , followed very closely by Justice Info.