The trial of Syria’s former grand mufti, Ahmed Bareddin Hassoun, opened at the Palace of Justice in Damascus on June 26. Hassoun led Syria’s official religious establishment under the Bashar Assad dictatorship. He is accused of incitement to murder and abusing his position as a mufti to provide religious cover for the crimes of the regime, as well as participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. He famously issued fatwas justifying the bombing of civilians and called the regime’s use of indiscriminate barrel bombs “liberation,” winning him the epithet “Barrel Bomb Mufti.” He also issued a fatwa in 2017 authorizing the execution of detainees held at the notorious Sednaya Prison, where the Assad regime killed thousands, many through torture and starvation.

Hassoun was arrested in March 2025, four months after the Assad regime fell, at Damascus Airport while trying to leave the country. The hearing was presided over by Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, who defected to the Syrian opposition in 2013 and had been sentenced to death by the Assad regime. (The New Arab)

See our last report on the Assad regime’s crimes.

Photo: SANA via Arab News

The presence of Uyghur fighters in Syria has been a presistent concern for China, helping to prompt Beijing military support for the Bashar Assad regime before it was overthrown in late 2024.

Map: PCL

Speaking at the G7 summit in France, Trump praised Sharaa as doing “an amazing job” and said: “If Israel can’t do the job [against Hezbollah] without killing everyone else, then he will do the job. Syria will do the job.”

But Trump’s comments came days after President al-Sharaa dismissed reports that Syria could become involved in the war in Lebanon as “mere rumors.”

Sources in Damascus told Asharq Al-Awsat that no official US request had been made for Syrian military intervention, and stressed that “entering the quagmire of war and sending military forces unilaterally is completely ruled out.”

The sources said that while US envoy Tom Barrack had previously urged Damascus to take a clear position against Hezbollah, discussion of deploying Syrian troops to Lebanon was “very, very early” and would only be considered in coordination with the Lebanese state.

Syria’s Interior Ministry also emphasized that “Lebanon is a sovereign state and not a backyard, as the former regime viewed it.” (Radio Free Syria)

Photo: Ahmad al-Sharaa meeting Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Damascus, May 9. Credit: SANA via Radio Free Syria

The vote covers Qamishli, al-Hasakah, Derik (al-Malikiyah) and Kobani (Ayn al-Arab), areas that were excluded from the broader parliamentary process held last October due to political and security conditions.

The covered areas have been allocated nine seats in the transitional assembly: four for Qamishli, three for al-Hasakah, and two for Derik. Candidates are being chosen by electoral councils made up of vetted local members under the process established by Syria’s transitional framework.

The elections in the region begin implementation of the January agreement between the SDF and Damascus aimed at integrating northeastern Syria into state institutions as negotiations continue over long-term governance arrangements, local administration, and the future of SDF-linked military and security structures.

The process has not been without criticism. Kurdish political parties and groups linked to the Autonomous Administration have voiced objections to the allocation of seats and the mechanism used to form the transitional assembly, arguing that Kurdish representation remains insufficient and warning that the current structure could reproduce patterns of political exclusion.

The current process remains an interim system rather than Syria’s final constitutional order. The People’s Assembly operates under transitional arrangements, with a mixed structure combining local council-elected members and direct presidential appointments. It nonetheless represents an early test of whether Syria’s reintegration can proceed through participation rather than coercion, and through integration without erasure.

Adopted from Radio Free Syria, May 24

See our recent podcast, “Twilight of Rojava?”

Map: PCL

Syria’s Interior Ministry announced May 8 the arrest of deposed regime brigadier Khardal Ahmad Dayyub (Dioub), a former head of Air Force Intelligence in Daraa, for his involvement in systematic human rights violations committed against civilians. Dayyub is accused of running an “assassination committee” in Daraa, as well as involvement in the chemical attacks on Eastern Ghouta during his later service in the Damascus regional branch. He is also said to have had a key role in coordination with Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria that were introduced to back up the Bashar Assad dictatorship. (SANA)

Despite some confusion in the reportage (e.g. Anadolu Agency), Dayyub appears to be implicated in the 2018 chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, not the far deadlier 2013 chemical attack in Ghouta, which resulted in threats of US military intervention.

See our last report on the Assad regime’s crimes.

Photo: SANA

Since the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship in December 2024, Israel has seized and occupied large areas of eastern as-Suwayda, and is believed to have dropped arms to Druze fighters in the region. The province has been effectively divided since fighting broke out last year between Druze militia and central government forces and their local Bedouin allies. (ToI)

The new fighting came one day after Jordan carried out air-strikes on as-Suwayda, ostensibly targeting a depot storing arms and illicit drugs “controlled by rebel groups” in the village of Shahba. Contraband trade in the drug captagon has long been a source of revenue for warring factions in Syria. (AFP)

Syria’s transitional government continues to face other challenges. Damascus on May 5 announced that its forces had foiled a Hezbollah plot to assassinate members of President Ahmad al Shara’s government, with security forces seizing weapons and explosives in raids across the country. The raids, in which at least 11 people were detained, were the most extensive yet against Hezbollah since the fall from power of the group’s former patron Bashar Assad. (The National, UAE)

Map: Google

The $334 million plan was adopted on April 17, foreseeing full development by 2030. The government purports to make the small town of Katzrin the Golan’s “first city,” by bringing in 3,000 new Israeli settler families. Funds are allocated for infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities.

Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at HRW, discussed the international legal aspects, declaring:

Israel’s cabinet has put public money behind a war crime in Syria at the same time as it is turbocharging settlement expansion in the West Bank alongside continued impunity for violence against Palestinians there. A permanent population transfer into Syrian territory violates international norms with grave implications for long-displaced Syrians.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer by an occupying power of any of its own civilian population into territory it occupies. Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), defines such transfers as war crimes.

Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Golan Heights has since been declared unilaterally annexed.

HRW has documented serious abuses by Israeli forces during further expansions into southern Syria, beginning in 2024, including holding families at gunpoint, razing homes with bulldozers, and cutting off access to traditional farmlands. The occupation also bars displaced Syrians from returning to their homes, which they have a right to under customary international law.

Zayadin also drew attention to US denial of “the reality that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory.” In 2019, Donald Trump declared that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel. No other state nor international body recognizes this declaration.

The UN affirmed the Golan Heights as Syrian in UN Security Council resolution 497, which was adopted unanimously in December 1981. The resolution declares that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international effect.” The UN General Assembly has consistently reaffirmed this, including in a December 2025 resolution which called for Israel to withdraw from the territory.

The Golan Heights is fertile land with vital water sources feeding into the Jordan River, located about 40 miles south of Syria’s capital, Damascus. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied most of the territory. The UN Secretary General reported in 2025 that there were 35 Israeli settlements, making up a population of over 31,000 Israeli settlers. Prior to 1967, approximately 140,000 Syrians lived in the Golan, while only about 20,000 members of the Druze community now remain. Syria has never ceded the territory, but has had no success in efforts to take it back.

From JURIST, April 30. Used with permission.

Photo: Freedom’s Falcon via Wikimedia Commons

See our last report on the Assad regime’s crimes.

Photo: SNHR

In related news, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week that he and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa hope to see 80% of Syrian refugees in Germany return to Syria in the coming three years. Merz’s call for Syrians to “go back to their homeland,” which came after his meeting with al-Sharaa in Berlin, drew condemnation from human rights monitors who pointed to continued violence and insecurity in Syria. (TNH, Jurist)

Photo: Sara Creta/TNH

Commissioners Monia Ammar and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin met with senior Syrian officials and various stakeholders to emphasize the importance of “transparency, accountability, security sector reform, and engagement with impacted communities” as core implementation priorities for the transition. The COI also called for a “legal system capable of fairly addressing the past” while also addressing “more recent violations,” underscoring that the transition must be defined by “equal protection” of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

The commissioners said they were encouraged by the growth of Syrian civil society organizations, including groups returning from exile. Still, they noted continued barriers and fears, and urged conditions that would allow civil society to operate “without restriction.” There remain legal questions about whether and to what degree authorities will tolerate independent documentation, advocacy, and victim participation, which are needed elements for credible truth-seeking, reparations design, and institutional vetting.

The COI was created by the Human Rights Council in 2011 to investigate violations of international human rights law in Syria since March 2011, to document facts and circumstances that may amount to crimes, and, where possible, to identify responsible actors to advance accountability. Its mandate also includes recommending reforms, international responses, and pathways to justice.

The COI statement explicitly linked transitional legitimacy to enabling civil society to operate “without restriction,” reflecting the reality that effective accountability depends on the safety and independence of non-state actors, especially where victims and witnesses may face retaliation.

The COI described spillover effects on Syria from the regional escalation following the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, including civilian casualties from falling debris from intercepted rockets, and raised concerns about “direct Israeli activity in southern Syria” interrupting internal stabilization efforts.

The statement emphasized core protection duties under international law, such as the obligation to protect civilians and to investigate potentially unlawful harm.

From JURIST, March 8. Used with permission.

See our last report on the transition process in Syria

Image: Damascus protest against Israeli intervention in Syria. Credit: The Syria Campaign via Facebook