Since the fall of the Syrian regime on 8 December 2024, transitional justice is among the most pressing demands inside the country and in the diaspora. While the interim government has established a Commission for Transitional Justice and a Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, the first ‘year after’ has not brought forth any domestic criminal proceedings or trials for serious crimes under the Assad regime. In the face of an economic crisis and violence still looming in different parts of the country, it will take time to establish an independent judiciary and a prosecution strategy.
In the meantime, countries all over the world have been investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria over the past 14 years. They have prosecuted perpetrators of the regime, as well as members of rebel groups and Islamic State (ISIS). The end of Syria’s war and dictatorship has not caused them to stop their efforts. On the contrary, 2025 has seen a number of new proceedings open up in Europe and the United States.
On the international front, three institutions continue to be active: the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ), and two UN mechanisms based in Geneva: the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) and the new Independent Institution on Missing Persons (IIMP).
International Court of Justice (ICJ)
On June 8, 2023, the Netherlands and Canada filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging that Syria is violating the international Convention Against Torture. All three countries are party to the treaty. In November 2023, the Court ordered Syria to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of torture and other abuses.
International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM)
On 21 December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution, that established the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under International Law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011. Based in Geneva, it has provided evidence to a number of national jurisdictions undertaking trials under the universal jurisdiction principle (see below).
Independent Institution on Missing Persons (IIMP)
in June 2023, the United Nations General Assembly established the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic. Its mandate is to determine the fate and whereabouts of all missing persons in Syria, and to support the families of the missing. It is based in Geneva. Its head Karla Quintana was appointed the month of the fall of the Assad regime.
Syria
- A first significant criminal trial has started on November 28, 2025, at the Aleppo Court of Justice in northern Syria, of suspects accused of having participated to the killing of hundreds of members of the Alawite minority, in March 2025. This case is seen as a test of President Ahamed al-Sharaa’s promise of accountability. Meanwhile, no ongoing trials have been reported concerning serious crimes committed under the previous regime.
- National Commission for Transitional Justice (NCTJ). On May 17, 2025 the new authorities in Syria established a national commission tasked with “uncovering the truth about grave violations caused by the defunct regime,” not the other armed groups or foreign troops.
- National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (NCM). On that same day, the Syrian transitional government established another national commission tasked with “researching and revealing the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared persons, documenting cases, establishing a national database, and providing legal and humanitarian support to their families.” Unlike the NCTJ, its mandate is not restricted to crimes committed by one actor. It is estimated that over 111,000 individuals forcibly disappeared in Syria, the vast majority at the hands of the Assad regime.
Austria
In 2018, sixteen survivors of Syrian detention centres, among them one Austrian citizen, filed a complaint in Vienna against 24 senior officers of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for torture and crimes against humanity. Seven years later, two of these officers have finally been charged. One of the men had lived in Vienna and Paris for years, protected by Israeli and Austrian intelligence agencies.
Belgium
In 2016, Belgium was the largest source of European fighters in Syria compared to its total population. It is no surprise that the Belgian authorities have focused on prosecuting crimes committed by Islamist groups in Syria.
One year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, Belgium is conducting 19 criminal investigations into alleged Syrian war criminals residing in the country, according to figures published on 4 December 2025 by the federal prosecutor's office.
45 members of the group “Sharia4Belgium” were put on trial and sentenced in 2015. The group sent recruits to militant groups such as ISIS, prosecutors said. The head of the group, Fouad Belkacem, lost his citizenship and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while other members received prison terms between three and 15 years. However, only seven were in Belgium for the trial. Most of them remained in Syria, and some might have been killed.
In 2023, a 38-year-old Syrian man was arrested and charged with war crimes and participation in the activities of a terrorist group (ISIS) in Palmyra.
In 2024, Hossin A. was the first Syrian from a regime affiliated militia to be indicted in Belgium for crimes against humanity and war crimes. He allegedly committed murder and torture as a member of the regime-controlled paramilitary force, the National Defence Force (NDF), in Salamiyah, south-east of Hama.
In November 2025, the first trial dealing with the Yazidi genocide commenced in a court in Brussels. It was concluded the following week with a guilty verdict for genocide and crimes against humanity. Defendant Sammy Djedou however, was not present in court. He was reported by the Pentagon to have been killed in Raqqa, Syria, in 2016. But since Belgian authorities never received formal confirmation of his death, they decided to proceed.
Apart from the crimes of individuals connected to terrorist groups or the Assad regime, Belgium also dealt with corporations. In 2019, a Belgian court found three of them guilty of shipping 168 tons of a substance potentially used in the making of chemical weapons to Syria between 2014 and 2016. Two managers received sentences of 4 and 12 months.
France
2025 has been a very busy year for French authorities in the prosecution of crimes committed in Syria.
In September 2025, French judicial authorities issued arrest warrants against former president Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad and five other top former officials over the bombardment of a rebel-held city in 2012 that killed American journalist Marie Colvin and French journalist Rémi Ochlik.
In November 2025, a trial started at the criminal court in Paris against the Lafarge cement company and eight former employees. They are accused of "funding terrorism" and, in some cases, of "failing to comply with international financial sanctions." The judicial investigation had been going on for eight and a half years, and the company, since then merged with Swiss company Holcim, had already pleaded guilty in a US court in 2022.
Just a few months before, in July 2025, the Cour de Cassation, the highest court in France, declared invalid an earlier arrest warrant against Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country’s civil war. The judges argued that the head of state had personal immunity from prosecution in foreign courts while he was in office. The now invalid arrest warrant had been issued by a French court in 2023. It accused Bashar al-Assad and three others complicity in war crimes against humanity linked to chemical weapon attacks on civilians. On July 29, a French judge issued a new arrest warrant.
In September 2025, three French women were put on trial in Paris. They are accused of joining ISIS in Syria and taking their eight children with them. Each of them faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Another trial that concluded in 2025 found guilty the former rebel fighter Majdi Nema. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for complicity in war crimes in Eastern Ghouta between 2013 and 2016. He “knowingly facilitated” the conscription of minors and participated in a “conspiracy” with the rebel group Jaysh al-Islam to prepare for war crimes, said the judges.
In February 2025, five suspected Islamist terrorists went on trial in Paris for allegedly kidnapping and torturing four French journalists in Syria between 2013 and 2014.
As a country that allows trials in absentia, France has been able to charge and convict higher ranking members of the Syrian regime than, for example, Germany, which can only put defendants on trial who are present in the country. In May 2024, the Paris Criminal Court convicted three Syrian senior officials for their role in the imprisonment, enforced disappearance and torture of two dual Syrian-French citizens, Patrick Dabbagh and his father Mazzen, in 2013.
In June 2020, a French court convicted Bashar al-Assad’s uncle Rifaat al-Assad for embezzling Syrian state funds to buy homes and offices in Paris and London. He received a four-year prison sentence that he avoided by escaping back to Syria.
Lastly, on 4 December 2025, a former member of the Syrian intelligence services was charged with crimes against humanity and imprisoned. Malik N., originally from Homs, was residing in France. He is believed to have been a member of Branch 285 of the Syrian intelligence services, which has ‘the highest number of deaths of detainees during the Syrian conflict since 2011,’ according to a statement from the French anti-terrorism prosecutor's office.
Germany
Since the beginning of the war in Syria, Germany has become home to the largest Syrian population in Europe. With around 1 million Syrians migrating to Germany, it is not surprising, that among them were victims, witnesses and even perpetrators of crimes against international law. This has allowed the country to take a leading role internationally in the prosecution of crimes committed in Syria.
In April 2020, the first trial dealing with Syrian state torture started in the Western-German city of Koblenz. Two former secret service officers were charged with crimes against humanity for participating in the torture and murder of detainees in Branch 251 in Damascus. The lower-ranking Eyad Al-Gharib became the first ex-intelligence officer to be convicted at the beginning of 2021. He was sentenced to four years in prison, while main defendant Anwar Raslan received a life-sentence in early 2022.
Just as the first trial was about to end, another one began in Frankfurt. The trial against Alaa Moussa, a Syrian doctor responsible for torturing detainees in an army hospital and a military intelligence prison in Homs and Damascus would take more than three years. It ended in June 2025 with a life sentence for the defendant.
Apart from these landmark trials, others have dealt with the crimes of militia members. In Berlin, Mouafak D., a former member of the militia “Free Palestine Movement”, was convicted to life imprisonment for firing a grenade into a crowd of civilians queueing to receive food aid in besieged Yarmouk in 2014, killing four people. In Hamburg, a former militia member was sentenced to ten years in prison in December 2024. He was found guilty of beating up young men at checkpoints and subjecting them to forced labour and torture.
Other trials dealt with the crimes of fighters in anti-Assad armed groups, but have not received much public attention. For example, in November 2020, Fares A.B. was sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing a prisoner during his time with the Free Syrian Army in December 2012. Another opposition fighter, Khedr A.K., was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in August 2021. He had participated in the execution of a previously captured lieutenant colonel in the Syrian army in July 2012. Syrian national Sami Al-S. received a nine-year sentence for filming the execution. And just recently, in November 2025, a court in Munich concluded a one-year trial against defendants Amer Tarak A., Sohail A. and Basel O.. They received sentences ranging from four and a half to nearly 10 years.
There have also been several trials in Germany against individuals who joined ISIS in Syria, among them German nationals. The defendants mostly received sentences for membership in a foreign terrorist organization, violation of weapons law, war crimes, and aiding and abetting crimes against humanity.
In June 2025, the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart sentenced a Syrian man to life in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes it said he had committed as a leading member of a Hezbollah-backed militia during Syria’s civil war.
On November 19, 2025, the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz once again became the stage for crimes allegedly committed in Syria. Five Syrian and Palestinian men are charged with homicide, torture and deprivation of liberty. It is the first trial ever dealing with starvation as a war crime.
In May 2025, Syrian national Fahad A. was arrested in the German town of Pirmasens. He is suspected of acts of killing, torture, and deprivation of liberty as crimes against humanity in the Syrian secret service’s Al-Khatib branch in Damascus between 2011 and 2012. And in November 2025, alleged former ISIS member Ahmed A. A. was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is said to have abused and beheaded Syrian civilians in Deir az-Zor in 2014.
Hungary
In November 2019, a Hungarian court in Budapest brought a Syrian man to trial who was accused of terrorism and crimes against humanity as a military leader of Islamic State near the city of Homs in 2015, saying he participated in the murders of dozens of people. In December 2020, Hassan F. was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Netherlands
In addition to the ICJ case (see map), the Netherlands have been active in prosecuting individual crimes committed in Syria since 2018.
In 2022, 36-year-old Mustafa A. was sentenced to 12 years in prison for complicity in crimes against humanity of serious deprivation of liberty and torture. As a member of the pro-Assad militia Liwa al-Quds, he participated in detaining and torturing a Palestinian man in Syria. The sentence was later increased to 13 years, and the Mustafa A. was ordered to pay 40.000 Euros in compensation to the victim.
Apart from Mustafa A.’s case, Dutch courts dealt only with the crimes of anti-Assad oppositional groups. One of the more prominent cases was that of Ahmad al-K., a Syrian national, who was sentenced to 23 years and 6 months in prison for leading a terrorist organization and for participating in the execution of a Syrian Army soldier which constituted a war crime.
Several smaller trials dealt with members of ISIS. Among them were Dutch men and women who travelled to Syria to join ISIS, such as Oussama A. who received a seven year sentence for a war crime, membership in a foreign terrorist group, and preparation of terrorist crimes.
Spain
Spain was the first European country to accept a criminal complaint against the Assad regime’s security forces as early as 2017. At the time, the national court ordered investigations to be opened into “state terrorism” by kidnapping, torturing and murdering a truck driver who disappeared in Damascus in 2013. However, the case was dropped later in 2017 with the court arguing it lacked jurisdiction, and no trials against Syrian regime forces were ever opened in Spain.
In 2019, a Syrian man was arrested in Madrid and accused of financing ISIS fighters in Syria.
Sweden
Following Germany, Sweden has the second largest Syrian population in Europe. And like Germany, it has been very active in prosecuting crimes committed by the Assad regime as well as ISIS in Syria.
As early as 2015, a Swedish court convicted Syrian national Mouhannad Droubi of a war crime. As a member of the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army, he assaulted a prisoner who was tied up. The crime had been filmed and shared on social media. Droubi, who had been granted residency in Sweden in 2013, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Swedish authorities may also have been the first to convict a former Assad regime soldier. Muhammad Abdallah had posed with the bodies of dead civilians in Syria, and was found guilty of a war crime for violating the dignity of a corpse. In 2017, he received an eight months prison sentence. Haisam Omar Sakhanh, another Syrian refugee in Sweden received a life sentence in 2017 for his participation in a 2012 execution of seven government soldiers in Syria.
European trials dealing with international crimes committed in Syria have mostly ended with convictions. The case of Brigadier General Mohammed Hamo was an exception. In May 2024, he was the highest-ranking former Syrian military official to go on trial in Europe. However, he was acquitted, as the Swedish court did not find sufficient evidence for the crimes he was accused of. Hamo had defected from the Syrian army in June 2012 and joined opposition fighters, then came to Sweden as a refugee in 2015.
Another Swedish trial against a Syrian national resulted in an acquittal. In May 2024, judges at the Blekinge District Court did not find sufficient evidence that alleged ISIS fighter Walid al-Zaytoun had participated in war crimes of murder of persons protected under international humanitarian law and humiliating and degrading treatment of another person.
In July 2024, a Swedish national was found guilty of serious war crimes and terrorism over his role in the murder of a Jordanian air force pilot who was burned to death in Syria in 2014. Osama Krayem, who had been a member of ISIS, was sentenced to life in prison.
In November 2025, a court in Stockholm convicted a 52-year-old Swedish woman of genocide, crimes against humanity, and gross war crimes committed in Syria in 2015 against women and children of the Yazidi religious minority, sentencing her to 12 years in prison.
The newest case that started in October 2025 has been a collaboration between Swedish and German authorities. While Germany put five pro-Assad militia and secret service men on trial for alleged war crimes, among them starvation, Sweden has just one defendant: Mahmoud Sweidan is accused of participating as a member or associate of a Palestinian militia loyal to the Assad regime, in a deadly shooting in the neighbourhood of Yarmouk on 13 July 2012.
Switzerland
For 12 years, Swiss authorities have been working on a case against one of the most high-ranking suspects of the Assad regime: Rifaat al-Assad, uncle of Bashar al-Assad, former Syrian vice president and alleged perpetrator of the 1982 massacre in the city of Hama. In March 2024, three years after issuing an international arrest warrant against the “Butcher of Hama”, the Office of the Attorney General finally charged him. In November 2024, the Federal Criminal Court announced that it might cancel the trial due to the defendant’s health issues and his inability to travel to Switzerland to stand trial. Rifaat al-Assad had been living in France for many years, but escaped back to Syria in 2021. He is now said to be living in Dubai.
In February 2019, a Swiss military court convicted former Swiss soldier Johan Cosar for fighting against ISIS in Syria. He was found guilty of undermining Switzerland’s neutrality and security by joining a foreign army, and given a three-month suspended sentence and fined 500 francs.
USA
The first in-person trial against a Syrian official is set to start in California in March 2026. According to court documents, Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 72, was the head of Adra Prison from approximately 2005 through 2008. In that role, Alsheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict and was sometimes personally involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners.
Other proceedings in the US have relied on written submissions. In 2023, a US citizen of Syrian origin filed a lawsuit against President Bashar al-Assad's government in Washington. Obada Mzaik claims that he was detained and tortured during a visit to Syria in 2012. In August 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found the Syrian government guilty of torturing Mzaik.
The United States have also issued arrest warrants for former Syrian Air Force Intelligence officers Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud in 2024. The indictment charges them with engaging in a conspiracy to commit cruel and inhuman treatment of civilian detainees, including U.S. citizens, during the course of the Syrian civil war.
In 2022, a US court sentenced executives of the French cement company Lafarge to terms of probation and to pay financial penalties, totalling $777.78 million. The defendants pleaded guilty for their role in conspiring to provide material support and resources to ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front, both terrorist organizations operating in Northern Syria, from 2013 to 2014.
