Syria's parliament has voted to abolish an antiterrorism court that was used to prosecute thousands of people, including peaceful activists, under the regime of ousted president Bashar Al Assad.
The decision sets aside the rulings of the court, which was formed in 2012, and mandates a committee to allow people to recover properties confiscated by the previous government.
Debate in parliament initially centred on amending the existing counter-terrorism law, but legislators concluded that the court itself should be eradicated. They said trials breached due processes and human rights.
“The court issued thousands of rulings and ordered the confiscation of funds and property without adequate safeguards for fair trials, relying on security investigations and confessions allegedly extracted from detainees through torture,” MP Nour Arabo told Syria's state news agency, Sana.
The new bill exempts people whose money and properties were returned by the old court, field courts or military courts from the beginning of the civil war in March 2011 until the fall of Al Assad in December 2024.
The vote was welcomed by Syrians and human rights watchdogs.
“The 'court' was established by Assad in 2012 as a mechanism to rubber-stamp mass imprisonment and execution of political prisoners,” Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programmes at the Middle East Institute, wrote on social media.
Joshua Landis, Syria expert and co-director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the decision was good news for the Syrian people.
“Let's hope the new regime doesn't find alternative ways to jail opponents and opposition elements without proper charges and transparent legal proceedings,” Mr Landis wrote on X.
The court had been widely condemned by international rights groups for its flawed prosecutions.
In April, the new Syrian government began court proceedings against a number of notorious figures from the former regime who had been arrested since the lightning rebel offensive that toppled Al Assad in December 2024.
This came months after Syria's President Ahmad Al Shara said he would centralise power to “instil civil peace and pursue the criminals who have spilt Syrian blood and committed towards us crimes and massacres”, referring to loyalists of the Assad regime, which had ruled Syria from 1970.
