Author: Mert H. Akgun

The collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria has opened a critical window for accountability. For more than a decade, Syria has endured some of the most egregious crimes of the 21st century: systematic torture, ill-treatment, indiscriminate bombardments and the forcible deportation of civilians. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), between March 2011, when the civil war broke out and March 2024, Syrian regime forces killed 201,260 civilians, including 23,039 children, and 15,074 of these victims were tortured to death. These figures reveal that, on average, 42 people, including five children, were killed in…