For more than fifty years, the Assad family maintained power by committing mass crimes. Since the fall of the regime on December 8, 2024, two commissions dedicated to transitional justice have been set up by the new authorities. A process that promises to be long and complex. Interview.

Published on: 07/12/2025 - 06:49 Modified on: 07/12/2025 - 15:56

Torture, rape, forced disappearances, incarceration… Mass crimes committed with complete impunity for more than fifty years in Syria. A year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, President Ahmed al-Charaa officially launched the titanic project of transitional justice.

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A national commission for transitional justice was created in order to “discover the truth about the serious violations committed by the former regime”, but also to judge those responsible “in coordination with the competent authorities, repair the damage caused to the victims and firmly establish the principles of non-repetition [of these crimes] and national reconciliation”.

Another commission was dedicated to missing persons. Since the 1970s, between 120,000 and 300,000 people have disappeared in Syria. Almost all Syrian families have been affected. Since the opening of the regime's prisons and the discovery of several mass graves, they have been desperately waiting to know what happened to their loved ones.

The fact remains that transitional justice is a long process. The risk is to see an increase in acts of individual revenge and punitive expeditions. Since the start of the year, several massacres have been perpetrated against the Druze and Alawite minorities, from which Bashar al-Assad's clan comes.

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For Aghiad Ghanem, doctor in international relations at Sciences Po, the crimes committed by pro-government militias must be judged in the same way as those of the old regime.

France 24: Why is transitional justice struggling to become a reality in Syria?

We saw after the major wars of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries that this was a long time frame. No one expects things to happen in a snap. But for the moment, this has obviously not been the government's priority. The consequence is that justice is carried out from below, in an arbitrary manner, giving rise to abuses which have been documented in recent months.

The interest there was in the trial of the March massacres shows this [14 people appeared before the Syrian justice system, Editor's note]. It was not a transitional justice trial as such, but a tension persists between the crimes of the present and those of the past. It is essential to resolve it to restore confidence in the mechanisms capable of judging past crimes. It is the absence of substantial transitional justice mechanisms which partly explains why the violence continues today.

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What are the main obstacles?

There are two big elephants in the room: the absence of regime officials who were all able to flee during the first 48 hours after the fall of the regime and the persistence of thousands of factions and foreign soldiers in Syria who practice crimes. For the moment, we are working around these subjects, we are making commissions... But as long as they are not really put on the table with prospects of resolution, we will not move forward towards the next stages of this transition.

The transitional justice commission has been set up, but we are still waiting for the law which will define its framework. We are not moving forward on these issues of crimes of the past because we are mired in the crimes of the present. There was a form of apathy in relation to the ambient discourse, which said that it was a necessary step after all these years of authoritarianism and civil war. Some even say that we can consider ourselves lucky that there have not been more massacres. However, I defend the idea that things could have gone better. On December 8, there were significant buds of a desire to move on to the post-Assad era in the vast majority of components of Syrian society.

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Can Ahmed al-Charaa negotiate the extradition of Bashar al-Assad with Russia?

Honestly, I have doubts about that. Bashar al-Assad is not an enemy of the ruling power. It is likely that if Al-Sharaa was able to take power so quickly in Syria, it is also because there is a form of deal with Russia, whose military bases remain. I don't see things getting resolved, at least not quickly. The judgment of Bashar al-Assad and the great dignitaries of his power is nevertheless a very important step.

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Do you think that Bashar al-Assad will one day be judged?

There is a big impasse for me on the subject of transitional justice: Bashar al-Assad left Syria, probably on the night of December 7 to 8, 2024. He is today in Russia and his brother Maher [commander of the 4th division of the Syrian army] would be in Iraq.

After decades of dictatorship, there is a thirst for justice and to see Bashar al-Assad and the leaders of his system before the courts. Today, there is an idea of ​​a trial "in absentia" [in his absence], but it is not at all what is expected.

Some of the personnel of Assad's state apparatus remained in place. He has transformed himself into the new team in power. There are patterns of political violence that persist. It is the continuity of the war. To make the transition, we must all have already agreed that the war is over and that we are ready to move on.

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