ICC urged to investigate Syria’s forced deportations

The International Criminal Court, ICC, has been told to hold President Bashar al-Assad’s regime accountable for atrocities carried out during the country’s bloody civil war.

A group of lawyers on Thursday said it filed requests with the ICC on behalf of 28 victims who were forced across the border into Jordan, according to a statement by UK law firm Stoke White.

Lawyer Toby Cadman said legal experts at the Guernica Centre for International Justice argued that a precedent set last year in a case involving the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar can be used to give the ICC jurisdiction over at least part of the Syrian conflict.

That case focused on Muslim Rohingya driven out from Myanmar, which is not an ICC member, into Bangladesh, which is, and the ICC ruled it had jurisdiction to look at a range of allegations against Myanmar’s security forces.

Syria, however, is not a member of the ICC and thus the court has no jurisdiction in the country.

That has meant that numerous allegations of atrocities committed during the conflict have not been prosecuted at the world’s first permanent criminal tribunal, something that Cadman wants to change.