21-28 April2023
21-28 AprilThe Syrian regime, along with other Arab states, experienced the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring. The protests, which in March 2011 began by calling for an end to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, erupted into a civil conflict which, according to the UN, has claimed more than 400,000 lives and forced half the population to flee the country.
Since the protests began, the repression by the Syrian government has been implacable. The Syrian Human Rights Observatory estimates that 88,000 civilians have died in Syrian jails after suffering torture, along with 205,300 people registered as disappeared.
The Chinese and Russian veto has prevented the creation of an international criminal court to try the crimes committed in Syria. However, the families of the disappeared have managed to get proceedings initiated in some countries against the figures responsible in the Syrian regime. In Germany, for example, there are three cases ongoing against collaborators with the Syrian regime for crimes against humanity, applying the principle of universal justice which allows a country to try offences committed in another country, irrespective of whether the perpetrator or the victim of the crime is a citizen of the prosecuting country.
In Spain, this principle of universal jurisdiction enshrined in the Judicial Authority Act, was restricted by means of a 2014 amendment. One of the victims or perpetrators must now be of Spanish nationality, which has led to the shelving of such cases as that brought against the Syrian regime by the Guernica 37 legal team, and the case against the Rohingya genocide.
