On Wednesday, 19 November, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz will begin a new trial addressing crimes committed under the Assad regime in Syria. For the first time, the starvation and siege of Yarmouk, a former Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, will be examined in court.
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. Now, four alleged members of the Syrian militia “Free Palestine Movement” (FPM) and one alleged Syrian intelligence agent must stand trial for homicide, murder, torture, deprivation of liberty, and the use of prohibited methods of warfare. They allegedly 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, cutting them off from food, medicine and humanitarian aid. “Besiege, starve, force to surrender” became a strategy of war used by the Assad regime to brutally target hundreds of thousands of civilians in oppositional areas. 11 months after the fall of the Assad regime, the Yarmouk case serves as an important contribution to the Syrian transitional justice process. It is also the largest universal jurisdiction trial to date.
“The history of Yarmouk was never written because those who could have told it were tortured, starved, killed, or forced to flee. This trial is a beginning – an attempt to fill this gap and show the world that Yarmouk was not collateral damage but a deliberate project of destruction. Without this truth, there will be neither justice nor remembrance that points toward the future," says Ruham Hawash, raised in Yarmouk and Syria Program Regional Manager at ECCHR.
Although it stands as one of the emblematic incidents of the Assad regime’s brutal conduct of warfare and the destruction of entire neighborhoods, thus far, no court has investigated the systematic siege and starvation of the civilian population in Yarmouk. In 2023, the Berlin Higher Regional Court (Kammergericht) convicted a member of a pro-Assad militia of war crimes and murder in Yarmouk. The trial, which was accompanied by ECCHR, marked an important legal step, but was criticized for being restricted to a single crime and for not sufficiently addressing the systematic nature of the blockade.
“New proceedings should close this gap and legally address the brutal warfare waged against entire districts. The case represents an important aspect of the transition to a new Syria: coming to terms with past atrocity crimes,” says Andreas Schüller, Co-Director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at ECCHR. “The experiences in Yarmouk reveal alarming parallels to the present: in Gaza, humanitarian aid structures were also deliberately destroyed, supply routes cut off, and civilians endangered by the deprivation of essential resources. Using hunger as a weapon – whether in Yarmouk or Gaza – is a war crime.”
For years, proceedings based on the principle of universal jurisdiction have played a central role in the legal processing of crimes committed by the Syrian regime. Now, the fall of the Assad regime presents an opportunity to advance transitional justice efforts in Syria itself. Transitional justice efforts in Syria can build on the precedents set by universal jurisdiction proceedings in third countries such as Germany.
“The Koblenz trial's focus on the systematic siege of Yarmouk marks a pivotal moment for Syrian transitional justice. By examining starvation as a method of warfare under international criminal law, this proceeding establishes legal precedents and evidentiary standards that Syrian institutions can integrate into their accountability processes,” says Fadel Abdulghany from the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
