Hope for justice in Syria dims 6 months after Assad’s fall: GIJN report

Six months after the sudden fall of the Assad regime, following a series of rebel offensives culminating in the capture of Damascus on December 8, 2024, Syrians and observers alike hoped a new chapter of transparency and accountability was beginning. For decades, Syrians in exile, activists, journalists, and dissidents were finally able to return home and access the remnants of the Assad dynasty’s rule — from presidential palaces to notorious prisons.

However, recent reports from journalists and activists who traveled inside Syria immediately after Assad fled to Moscow suggest this brief window of access and accountability is rapidly closing.

At the 2025 Netzwerk Recherche annual conference in Hamburg earlier this month, Syrian journalist Amer Matar, activist and lawyer Mariana Karkoutly, and ARD Cairo bureau chief Anna Osius shared their firsthand experiences investigating Syria’s post-Assad reality — highlighting the challenges of documenting crimes amid shifting political power.

Matar, exiled in Germany since 2012 and director of the ISIS Prisons Museum, recalled the shock and hope he felt when Assad fled. “That was the big dream of my life — to have Syria free from Bashar al-Assad,” he said. Returning to Syria, Matar and his team documented abandoned prisons using 3D cameras to create virtual models, including the infamous Sednaya military prison, where countless detainees faced torture and disappearance over decades.

Initially, security was lax, allowing his team to film in over 70 prisons, capturing walls etched with prisoners’ names and evidence of atrocities. But over time, many of these sites were sealed off again or repurposed by the new regime. “They want to use the horrible prisons again,” Matar said. Visiting Al-Khatib prison in Damascus — where he had been held and tortured in 2011 — Matar found the same brutal practices still in place, underscoring a disturbing continuity of repression.

Mariana Karkoutly, an independent legal investigator, described the bleak legal landscape for accountability. Despite the fall of Assad, “there is no legal framework to open war crimes cases inside Syria,” she explained. The interim government shows little interest in pursuing justice for past crimes and obstructs access to information. “They are literally working against everything that Amer and his team have been doing… reproducing the cycle of violence,” Karkoutly said.

Efforts to communicate with Syrian judicial authorities have stalled. “It’s absurd that we can talk to war crimes prosecutors in Europe, but not to our own attorney general,” she added.

Anna Osius, who reported from Syria shortly after Assad’s departure, recalled the surreal experience crossing into the country: “A heavily armed guard welcomed us with a smile — ‘Welcome to Syria… Journalist, journalist, yes, come in!’” Yet, since that initial moment, media access has become increasingly restricted, with opaque visa processes and uneven permissions, especially for local journalists.

Syrian state television has returned, polished and modernized, but remains firmly under government control, promoting interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and continuing strict limits on press freedom, Osius noted.

Moderator Kristin Becker of German broadcaster SWR concluded the session on a cautiously hopeful note. “You are investigating, documenting, reporting — and as long as this is happening, things are being watched, not happening in the dark anymore,” she said.

While the window for uncovering Syria’s painful recent past is narrowing, the efforts of activists, journalists, and legal investigators remain critical in preserving truth and striving for justice amid ongoing challenges.