The new Syrian flag held by a young boy in a crowd in Damascus after the fall of the Assad regime. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L’Orient Today)
The head of the Syrian National Commission for Transitional Justice, Abdel Baset Abdellatif, announced Tuesday that the commission is communicating with Interpol and specialized international bodies, with the aim of prosecuting and extraditing former members of the deposed Syrian regime, including the former dictator Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher.
The Syrian official also stated that the organization wants to pursue members of Hezbollah "who have Syrian blood on their hands."
“We will prosecute all those who have committed crimes against the people, including Hezbollah,” Abdellatif said in an interview with Saudi news outlet al-Arabiya.
“We are working to establish bridges with Interpol and all relevant international institutions, in order to legally prosecute the perpetrators of crimes from the family of the criminal Bashar and his brother Maher ... as well as others, to bring them to justice for the crimes they committed against the Syrian people in all its components.”
Abdellatif emphasized that the prosecutions will not be limited to Bashar al-Assad, his army and his security services, they would also extend to all those who participated in, supported, justified, or incited the crimes committed against Syrians, including businessmen and institutions complicit in these violations.
The victims, he specified, are all those who lost their lives, became disabled, lost family support, saw their homes destroyed, or suffered torture, enforced disappearance, or genocide. Compensation for the victims, he said, will be both material and moral, individual or collective.
He indicated that the commission is planning to set up a special fund for this purpose, in cooperation with the international community, given the scale of the damage suffered by Syrians.
“My message to our Syrian compatriots is as follows: let us unite, in all our diversity, to demand the truth, accountability for all criminals without exception, and justice for the victims," he told al-Arabiya. "This is the only way to build a state based on equal citizenship, the primacy of the law, and to finally turn the page on oppression and tyranny.”
The commission is a national body that is financially and administratively independent, he said, and is tasked with shedding light on the serious violations committed by the former regime, holding those responsible to account in coordination with the competent authorities, compensating the victims, and strengthening the principles of national reconciliation to prevent the recurrence of such crimes.
Syria is currently under a transitional government headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa the leader of a coalition of largely Islamist opposition forces that overthrew Assad in December 2024. Syria continues to experience outbursts of violence amid the instability and tensions that remain following 13 years of devastating civil war in the country. The latest wave of fighting broke out between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouins fighters in southern Syria's Sweida province, which left more than 1,300 dead between July 13 and 20.
Hezbollah was a loyal ally of the Assad regime, and its fall, together with the war with Israel, contributed to the party's weakening. Hezbollah fought alongside the forces of the deposed president and supported him until he was ousted.
On July 25, the French Court of Cassation annulled the arrest warrant issued by two investigating judges in November 2023 against Bashar al-Assad — who took refuge in Russia after being deposed — for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The French anti-terrorist prosecutor's office announced three days later that it was seeking a new international arrest warrant against the former Syrian president. In August 2013, sarin gas chemical attacks Assad's forces against Adra and Douma, then in Eastern Ghouta, killed more than 1,000 people and injured hundreds more.
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