UK imposes sanctions on six Syrian regime figures including foreign minister

Close allies of President Bashar Al Assad will be subject to travel bans and frozen assets

Syrian soldiers are seen cheering President Bashar Al Assad during his visit to Al Habit on the southern edges of the Idlib province, in a picture released on October 22, 2019. AFP / Syrian Presidency Facebook page

A Turkish gendarme retrieves the body of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi from a beach in Turkey. Reuters

The guided-missile destroyer 'USS Porter' conducts strikes while in the Mediterranean Sea, on April 7, 2017. AFP / US NAVY

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on October 31, 2013, shows the remains of a mortar after an alleged mortar attack by rebel fighters on the Damascus mixed Christian-Druze suburb of Jaramana. AFP / Sana

Displaced Syrians from the south of Idlib province sit out in the open in the countryside west of the town of Dana in the north-west Syrian region on December 23, 2019. AFP

This picture shows a general view of an overcrowded displacement camp near the village of Qah near the Turkish border in Syria's north-west Idlib province, on October 28, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic crisis. AFP

A picture taken on March 23, 2019, shows the last ISIS bastion in the eastern Syrian village of Baghuz after the defeat of the group. The Kurdish-led forces pronounced the end of ISIS regime on March 23, 2019, after flushing out the diehard militants from their very last bastion in eastern Syria. AFP

Anti-government activists gesture as they gather on the streets of Daraa, 100 kilometres south of the capital Damascus, on March 23, 2011. AFP

Syria's President Bashar Al Assad heading a cabinet meeting in the presidential palace in Damascus in 2013. Sana / AFP

A picture taken on October 3, 2015 shows a Russian army pilot leaving the cockpit of a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia. AFP

Members of the Free Syrian Army raise their weapons during a patrol in Idlib in north-west Syria on February 18, 2012. AFP

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is shown shaking hands with government troops in Eastern Ghouta, in the leader's first trip to the former rebel enclave outside Damascus in years, in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on March 18, 2018. Syrian Presidency Facebook page / AFP

Militant fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province, on June 30, 2014. Reuters

Britain imposed sanctions on six senior Syrian regime figures on Monday, including the foreign minister, 10 years after the devastating conflict in Syria began.

Targets included Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, media adviser Luna Shibl and two senior military figures, Malik Aliaa and Zaid Salah, all close allies of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

“The Assad regime has subjected the Syrian people to a decade of brutality for the temerity of demanding peaceful reform,” said British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

“Today, we are holding six more individuals from the regime to account for their wholesale assault on the very citizens they should be protecting.”

Britain’s Foreign Ministry said the “individuals are all part of or support the regime, and are responsible for repressing the Syrian people or benefiting from their misery”.

The six will be subject to frozen assets and travel bans “to ensure they do not benefit from the UK in any way”.

Prominent businessman Muhammad Bara’ Al Qatirji and financier Yassar Ibrahim were among those sanctioned.

Mr Mekdad, who was promoted from his deputy foreign minister role in November, "shares responsibility for the Syrian regime's violent repression against the civilian population", the UK government said.

The European Union imposed sanctions on him two months ago for similar reasons.

Maj Gen Aliaa, as a leader of the Republican Guard and its commander as of January 2021, was “responsible for the violent repression of the civilian population by troops under his command, particularly during the increased violence of the offensives on north-west Syria of 2019-20”, the UK government said.

Maj Gen Salah was guilty of similar repression, "particularly during the increased violence of the Idlib/Hama offensive which began in April 2019”.

The penalties are the first targeting Syrian leaders under the UK’s autonomous sanctions regime, which was implemented at the start of this year.

Dima Al Kaed, 29, a Syrian journalist and refugee living in Erbil, capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, holds a photo of herself dating from 2013 when she graduated from Damascus University. During the war, Kaed lost her parents and her home. She arrived in Erbil at the end of 2020 without hope of returning. "I dreamt of changing the world, but instead the war changed mine," she said. AFP

Anas Ali, 27, a Syrian citizen journalist and refugee poses for a picture in Paris, while holding photos of himself - including one when was injured in 2013 while covering fighting between rebel and government sides. Originally from the town of Kafr Batna in the long-time rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on the doorstep of Damascus, Ali has lived in France as a refugee since 2019. AFP

Samer Al Sawwan, 33, is seen in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 1, 2021, while holding a photo of himself from ten years prior standing on a beach in the coastal resort of Latakia. Sawwan's vehicle was pierced by a bullet while driving in 2011, sending the vehicle into a barrel roll that paralysed him forever. "I passed out with two legs, and woke up in a wheelchair," he says. "My ambitions and dreams have changed." AFP

Abu Anas, 26, reportedly blinded in the aftermath of government shelling, poses for a picture in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib, while holding a photograph of himself when he was 16. Originally from the town of Saqba in the countryside of the capital Damascus, Abu Anas was displaced from his home in 2018. He was then injured during artillery shelling in 2020 and lost his eyesight. He was recently married and has no children. He is currently a 4th year student in law and Sharia at Idlib University. AFP

Mohammed Al Hamid, 28, a former Syrian rebel fighter and amputee, poses for a picture while leaning on crutches in the rebel-held northern city of Idlib on March 6, 2021. Hamid says he was wounded in a 2016 battle against government forces in Latakia, where his brother also died in his arms. That same year, he learnt three other siblings had died in prison after they were detained two years earlier. In 2017, war planes bombarded his home in Idlib, killing his daughter. AFP

Mohammed Al Rakouia, 70, a Palestinian refugee painter from the ravaged Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees south of Syria's capital Damascus, stands along an alley by damaged buildings in the camp on March 7, 2021, while holding a picture of himself working in his former studio dating from ten years prior. Al Rakouia laments his losses saying "nothing can make up" for them. "My studio has been destroyed, my paintings have been stolen, and my colours have been scattered all over the place." AFP

Rukaia Alabadi, 32, a journalist and refugee, poses for a picture in France's capital Paris on February 27, 2021, while holding a photo of herself in 2011 when she was an economics student at Al Furat University in he hometown of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria. Alabadi arrived in Paris as a refugee in 2018 after escaping threats over her reporting about the reality of life in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor under ISIS. Before that, she had been detained for months over working as a media activist. AFP

Bakri Al Debs, 29, a Syrian medic and amputee, poses for a picture in the town of Ihsim in Syria's rebel-held northwestern Idlib province on March 6, 2021, while holding a picture of himself in a similar pose from ten years prior at Tishrin University in Latakia where he studied Sociology, before losing his leg in a government air strike in 2015. AFP

Ahmed Nashawi, also known as Abu Abdo, poses with a portrait of himself from ten prior ago outside his destroyed house in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on February 22, 2021. The man in his fifties, once one of the city's most popular fishmongers, said his home and shop on Sahat Al Hatab square were obliterated in clashes between rebels and pro-government fighters in 2015. AFP

Fahad Al Routayban, 30, a Syrian refugee, poses for a picture the building where he works as a concierge, in Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli on February 23, 2021, while holding a phone showing a photo of himself from 11 years prior as a Syrian army soldier. Routayban fled his hometown of Raqa to Lebanon in 2013. He finally settled in Tripoli where he got married to a relative, another Syrian refugee, fathering two sons. AFP

It comes after British police opened a preliminary investigation into Mr Assad's wife Asma for alleged involvement in war crimes.