UK announces new sanctions against allies of Syria's Assad after 'decade of brutality'

Britain has sanctioned senior members of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government for their role in the persecution and killing of civilians during the country’s ten-year civil war.

Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on Monday announced travel bans and asset freezes against six figures he says were complicit in a “wholesale assault on the very citizens they should be protecting.”

“The Assad regime has subjected the Syrian people to a decade of brutality for the temerity of demanding peaceful reform,” he said in a statement.

The targets include Faisal Miqdad, the Syrian foreign minister; Luna Al-Shibl, a media advisor to president Assad; and Yassar Ibrahim, a financier who is accused of using his business empire as a “front” for the Assad family’s personal hold on the Syrian economy.

Also sanctioned are Major Generals Malik Aliaa and Zaid Salah, who are both accused of “violent repression of the civilian population,” and Muhammed Bara’ al-Qatirji, a businessman alleged to have profited from enabling oil and wheat trading with the Syrian government.

The move marks ten years since the start of Syria’s civil war, when government forces opened fire on protesters demanding democratic reform in the spring of 2011.

Around a half a million people have been killed and 11 million displaced by the fighting since.

The measures are the UK’s first against Syrian figures since Britain adopted an independent sanctions regime after the end of the EU transition period.

Sanctions adopted under the EU’s sanctions regime, including against Assad and his British wife Asma al-Assad, remain in place.

Guernica 37, an international justice chambers, on Friday submitted a confidential filing with the Metropolitan Polices’ War Crimes Unit to open an investigation against Mrs Assad over “allegations of incitement and encouragement to commit acts of terrorism.”

Mrs Assad, a former investment banker who was born in London, could face an international arrest warrant if officers determine there is sufficient evidence to warrant a full investigation.

The new sanctions come as Russian human rights lawyers demand a criminal investigation into the alleged torture and murder of a Syrian civilian by members of a Kremlin-linked private military company fighting on the side of Assad’s government.

A complaint on behalf of the brother of the victim was filed with Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s rough equivalent of the FBI, last week, three NGOs representing the family said on Monday.

The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Russia’s Memorial Human Rights Centre described it as the first-ever case that seeks to hold the Russian state accountable for atrocities perpetrated by its hired hands.

The man, identified as Mohamad A, was last seen in a gruesome video shot in June 2017 and obtained by Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper which showed four Russian-speaking men pounding him with a sledgehammer and chopping at his body with knives and shovels. They later set his body on fire.

Novaya Gazeta in 2019 identified the Russians as mercenaries from the Wagner group, a shadowy company linked to Yevgenny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman known as “Putin’s chef” for his close ties to the Kremlin.

Clemence Bectarte, coordinator of FIDH’s litigation team, said in a statement that the three NGOs worked for months to gather sufficient evidence to press their case.

“We will also continue to work through all available judicial avenues until justice is achieved,” she said.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Monday that he was aware of the complaint but said that it was up to the investigators, not the Kremlin, to look into it.

Independent reporting by Russian and international media suggests that Wagner mercenaries have been operating in Syria with the full knowledge and blessing of Russia’s Defence Ministry.

The Russian government has denied any links to Wagner. The Kremlin has previously described the video as “shocking” but insisted that it had no idea who the killers were.