Despite the legal and political barriers to prosecution, human rights experts are optimistic that al-Assad and regime officials could one day be held accountable for their crimes in a court of law.
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00:00Can Bashar al-Assad be prosecuted?
00:08The al-Assad regime has been toppled, but its scars on Syria and its people still run
00:14deep.
00:15BN and other organizations have documented widespread torture, rape, mass executions
00:21and other abuses committed by al-Assad's government over the past quarter of a century.
00:27But there is no clear-cut route towards prosecuting the operatives responsible and delivering
00:32justice to the victims.
00:34Let's break down why.
00:36The new Syrian administration, led by the rebels of the HTS group, has vowed to bring
00:40the officers responsible for torture under the previous regime to justice in the Syrian
00:45courts.
00:46But al-Assad has been granted asylum in Russia and there is no political motive for the Kremlin
00:51to extradite him, at least for now.
00:54The Hague-based International Criminal Court is the most obvious international court of
00:58law for prosecuting individuals for such serious crimes.
01:02But the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Syria as the country is not a state party
01:06to the court's treaty, the Treaty of Rome.
01:09There is a workaround.
01:11The UN Security Council can in principle refer a case to the ICC, granting it jurisdiction.
01:18But that would likely be vetoed by Russia, which has offered refuge to al-Assad and his
01:22family.
01:23Some experts say much will depend on the new Syrian administration and their political
01:27will to become an ICC member.
01:29Universal jurisdiction also allows someone who has committed a serious crime in Syria
01:34to be held accountable before a non-Syrian court.
01:37For example, a French court has issued international arrest warrants for Bashar al-Assad, his brother
01:44and two officials over an attack against civilians using chemical weapons in 2013.
01:51Other courts in Germany and the US have issued warrants for the arrest of other officials
01:56of the al-Assad regime.