Syria: No amnesty for those who murdered and tortured

The Assad family fled to Russia, but there was “not enough room” in their private plane, noted The Guardian. Intelligence officers, who were the cogs and cogs of the Syrian torture and murder machine, were mostly left to their own devices. Many are expected to try to use people-smuggling networks to get to Europe, and efforts are underway to track them as they try to escape.

“We will not hesitate to bring to justice the criminals, murderers, security and army officers who participated in the torture of the Syrian people,” said Šara alias Džulani, according to the letter. “At the same time, we ask the countries to which they fled to hand them over so that we can achieve justice,” he added.

According to Reuters, the new transitional government led by Prime Minister Muhammad Bashir has so far issued arrest warrants for approximately 160 people associated with the Assad regime who are accused of human rights violations and war crimes.

But legal experts who have been gathering evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria have warned that the country is a long way from having a legal system capable of prosecuting war criminals.

“We should not forget that in the euphoria and excitement of this moment (the fall of Assad),” said Alan Haji, who works on war crimes cases in The Hague for the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center (SJAC). “There is no such thing as a war crime or crimes against humanity or genocide in the Syrian criminal code, and there is no prescribed punishment for such crimes,” he pointed out.

According to the letter, Assad’s regime was by far the worst perpetrator of murder, torture and violence, and at the time of its fall it detained more than 135,000 people, including almost 4,000 children. But according to the letter, even the Islamists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group of the new Syrian ruler Shara are not without guilt. According to The Guardian, experts investigating cases from past years consider this group responsible for the detention or forced disappearance of 2,514 Syrians, including 46 children.

But the International Criminal Court in The Hague does not have direct jurisdiction over Syrian cases because Syria has not joined the court or accepted its jurisdiction, and an attempt to introduce jurisdiction through the UN Security Council in 2014 was blocked by Russia and China.