Assad’s Fall in Syria Renews Push for Justice on Crimes Committed by His Regime

The fall of Syria’s government has breathed new life into a long push for justice over crimes committed by the Assad regime. Now, at last, there is a chance for human rights groups to inspect prison sites, freely interview witnesses and quickly build legal cases for prosecution.

Yet there is also frustration because the ultimate goal of the effort would be to see the deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, stand trial, according to rights activists who spoke this week about their work on Syria.

With Mr. al-Assad in Russia, according to officials in Moscow, that prospect appears out of reach. Activists, many of whom have devoted years to the effort, remain undeterred.

“We are targeting the system,” said Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights. “The Assad regime is not just the man himself. We need to target the security forces and the army and the tools Assad used to commit those crimes.”

The war in Syria has been a watershed for human rights work, in part because of the scale of the abuses committed. In addition to the more than 200,000 civilians reported to have been killed in the war, at least 15,000 people are believed to have died from torture or to have been killed in the regime’s prison system, and some 130,000 are still missing, according to Mr. Abdul Ghany’s group.

Organizations including the Commission for International Justice and Accountability and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have worked to document abuses and crimes to lay the groundwork for future prosecutions.

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