The German Federal Prosecutor's Office has brought charges under the principle of universal jurisdiction against five men suspected of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus. Four alleged members of the Syrian militia “Free Palestine Movement” (FPM) and one alleged Syrian intelligence agent must stand trial for homocide, torture and deprivation of liberty before the Koblenz Higher Regional Court from 19 November 2025. The charges also include murder and the use of prohibited methods of warfare.

During the course of the Syrian revolution, mass protests against the Assad regime erupted in Yarmouk – also known as the “capital of the Palestinian diaspora” – from 2011 onwards. The government and its allied militias, including the FPM, which controlled the camp, brutally cracked down on the protests. Among these forces were the accused militiamen. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, they took part in the violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration against the Syrian regime on 13 July 2012. Subsequently, the population of Yarmouk was held under siege from December 2012 onwards.

In July 2013, Yarmouk in Damascus was completely sealed off. Roughly 18,000 trapped civilians were cut off from all provisions of food, medicine, and humanitarian aid. As a result, approximately 200 civilians died of starvation and typhus until the regime almost completely destroyed the camp with barrel bombs in 2015. “Besiege, starve, force to surrender” became a strategy of war used by the Assad regime to brutally target hundreds of thousands of civilians in areas controlled by the opposition.

ECCHR has been working intensively since 2012 to address the crimes in Syria through international criminal law and supports survivors of the crimes in Yarmouk who wish to participate in the proceedings as joint plaintiffs. Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, Germany can prosecute international crimes regardless of who committed them, where they were committed, or against whom they were directed. Germany has played a pioneering role in addressing the crimes of the Syrian regime, at least since the al-Khatib trial before the Koblenz Higher Regional Court. In 2014, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office opened a structural investigation into crimes committed by non-state actors in the Syrian conflict.

For years, proceedings based on the principle of universal jurisdiction have been central to the legal reckoning with the crimes of the Syrian regime – often as the only way for those affected to obtain justice. The fall of the Assad regime after 54 years of dictatorship and 13 years of bloody civil war opens up new avenues to legally address the crimes of the dictatorship that were previously unavailable. Syrian civil society is now in discussion with the international community about what exactly such processes of justice and reparation should look like.