Criminal trials for crimes in Syria

Today, Thursday, the first trial against one of the torturers of the Assad regime begins in Koblenz. As of tomorrow, April 24, a member of the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) will have to answer to the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court. While most of the criminal trials over the recent years concerned people who recruited fighters for IS or collected money, the trial in Koblenz is against an active member of the Assad regime – the first of its kind.

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) calls for legal actions against everyone who committed crimes during the war in Syria and Iraq: "Justice can only be done if those who are responsible, on all sides of the conflict, are actually held accountable," explained Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP's Middle East Consultant. "And crimes have been committed on all sides: by the Assad regime and its allies, by IS, and also by the Turkish-backed Islamist militias."

Assad and his allies are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people, and they forced millions of people into flight and displacement. The fact that some of Assad's torturers are finally behind bars gives people courage. "It is important for the victims to know that the perpetrators will not go unpunished," Sido emphasized. "There can be no safe haven for war criminals and people who committed genocide crimes – no impunity, for impunity is the best way to encourage new crimes."

Several members of the Islamist opposition, for example the Free Syrian Army, are guilty of attacks against people from the ethnic groups and religious communities of the Kurds, Armenians, Christians, Alevis, and Yazidis, too. "Although most factions of the FSA propagate democracy for the post-Assad period, they have established Islamic Sharia law in the territories under their control," Sido stated.

The STP had repeatedly demanded the German federal government to provide support for the self-administration in Northern Syria in the attempts to punish IS crimes. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, about 12,000 IS fighters are currently in Kurdish captivity. "So far, the German government has ignored all warnings about the conditions there," Sido said. "There are said to be up to 3,000 foreign jihadists from a total of 54 countries – also from Germany – among the prisoners."