As in France, legal proceedings have been initiated or completed in a number of European countries against former officials of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime.

Ministers said on Sunday, December 15, that supporters of the fallen regime would be brought to justice if they entered Germany. "We will hold all the regime's henchmen to account for their terrible crimes, to the full extent of the law," Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser added in the same publication: "If henchmen of the Assad terror regime try to flee to Germany, they should know that hardly any other state prosecutes their crimes as harshly as Germany."

The German justice system has already convicted several Al-Assad government officials under the principle of universal jurisdiction, adopted in 2002. This enables a state to prosecute the perpetrators of the most serious crimes, regardless of their nationality or where the acts were committed. Since 2011, Germany has been one of the first Western nations to prosecute officials of the Syrian regime, as well as jihadist fighters who fought against it and committed war crimes. Indeed, Germany has taken in the largest number of refugees from Syria, among whom were "a handful of individuals who have perpetrated international crimes," stated the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a Berlin-based human rights NGO, in a report published this year.

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