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Germany’s Federal Prosecutor General has received criminal complaints from victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria against Syrian officials accusing them of causing hundreds of civilian deaths in opposition-controlled areas.
A spokesman for the German prosecution confirmed that the complaints had been filed and declined to give details.
Lawyers representing the victims said the allegations are based on what they describe as the strongest physical evidence to date of the use of substances such as sarin gas in Ghouta in Syria in 2013 and in Khan Sheikhoun four years later, which at least 1,400 citizens were killed.
Germany is home to 600,000 Syrians and its laws allow the prosecution of crimes against humanity anywhere in the world.
This opens a rare legal arena for action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Attempts by Western powers to open an international tribunal to deal with Syria were hampered by opposition from Russia and China at the UN Security Council.
Lawyers for the victims say the evidence includes testimonies from 17 survivors and 50 defectors with information about the Syrian government’s chemical weapons program or plans to carry out the attacks.
“The prosecution can ultimately conclude that there is sufficient evidence to issue arrest warrants against members of the Assad regime,” said Steve Costas, a lawyer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, one of the three groups behind the complaints.
“This will be an important step in a longer process to prosecute Syrian officials,” he added.
And in 2016, a UN-ordered investigation to determine who was behind the chemical weapons attacks in Syria concluded that Syrian government forces had used chlorine gas and sarin gas.
“This is a small step, but it gives us hope that one day we can see justice done,” said a volunteer doctor who was injured while rescuing the victims of the Ghouta attack.
“The world has begun to forget us, and our complaints are a reminder that the world has a moral obligation to help bring those who used chemical weapons to court,” added the woman who fled to Germany in 2015 and asked not to publish her name out of fear for your safety.
Syrian lawyers and torture victims are also trying to bring cases against former Syrian army and security officials who reside in Germany and are suspected of violating human rights.
In Germany, the first trial began in April of members of Assad’s security services suspected of having committed crimes against humanity, including torture and sexual assault.
The German prosecutor has also issued an international arrest warrant against the intelligence chief of the Syrian Air Force on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The meaning of the complaints is to send a signal to the main supporters of the Syrian regime, namely Russia and Iran, that there is no solution to the conflict without accountability for crimes committed against civilians,” said Mazen Darwish, director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
