{"id":466319,"date":"2026-03-09T17:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/466319\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T17:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:57:08","slug":"man-in-uk-charged-with-crimes-against-humanity-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/466319\/","title":{"rendered":"Man in UK charged with crimes against humanity in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The man has been charged with three counts of murder as a crime against humanity, three counts of torture, and one offence of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is alleged that in his role, the man led a group tasked with quelling demonstrations in the suburbs of Damascus. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It marks the first time the CPS has brought charges of murder as crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cdr Helen Flanagan, who leads Counter Terrorism Policing London, said: &#8220;The charges are extremely serious and show that we fully support the UK&#8217;s &#8216;no safe haven&#8217; policy in relation alleged war criminals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Where we are presented with allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that fall within our jurisdiction, then, as we have shown here, we will not hesitate to investigate those rigorously and robustly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Met said the investigation began in November 2020 after counter-terrorism police received a referral containing allegations relating to a man when he was serving in the Syrian armed forces in the early 2010s. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The man was arrested in December 2021 after officers from the War Crimes Unit visited an address in Buckinghamshire, where they also carried out a search. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man has been charged with three counts of murder as a crime against humanity, three counts of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-466319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}