Five NGOs consider the issuance of an international arrest warrant for Bashar Al-Assad, his brother Maher Al-Assad, and two other top officials of the Syrian regime on the charge of using banned chemicals in the attack on Douma dating back to 2013.

Lawyer Steve Costas, a spokesman for the Open Society Justice Initiative, a subsidiary of the George Soros foundation, pointed out that this is the first time that an international arrest warrant has been issued by the judiciary of one country against a leader of another country for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Bashar al-Assad is described in the warrant as an accomplice to the crimes, believing that they could not have been committed without him being aware of the actions.

Damascus has repeatedly denied the use of chemical weapons to quell the anti-regime protests of that period. In 2013, Syria signed the chemical weapons non-proliferation treaty and surrendered its stockpiles.

On May 13, 2023, the Supreme Court of France ruled that French justice has the jurisdiction to issue international arrest warrants against foreigners for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed outside French territory. The Syrian government has denied the allegations, which have also sparked legal complaints in Germany and other European countries.

Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011 after Assad’s crackdown on peaceful protests escalated into a deadly conflict that drew foreign forces and jihadists from around the world.

The war has killed more than half a million people and has displaced half of the country’s pre-war population.

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