Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights Fadel Abdul Ghany said Wednesday that the People’s Assembly’s approval of a bill repealing Law No. 22 of 2012, which established the Terrorism Court, represents a necessary constitutional and rights-related step toward addressing the legacy of one of the ousted regime’s most prominent exceptional judicial institutions used to prosecute opponents and participants in the Syrian revolution.
Addressing the legacy of exceptional judicial institutions
In a statement to SANA, Abdul Ghany said the Terrorism Court was not an ordinary court whose proceedings were merely marred by procedural shortcomings, but rather an institution established under exceptional legislation that undermined fair-trial guarantees.
He noted that abolishing the court marks the beginning of a legal and institutional process that must translate into concrete measures addressing the rights of those affected.
Abdul Ghany explained that Article 7 of the repealed law allowed the court to disregard procedural rules stipulated in applicable legislation during prosecution and trial proceedings.
He added that the network had documented the court’s reliance on security reports and confessions allegedly extracted through torture, restrictions on the right to defense, and a lack of transparency in publishing rulings and the standards applied in issuing them.
The scale of the cases was extensive, Abdul Ghany said, noting that the network had documented at least 10,767 people brought before the court and around 90,560 cases as of October 2020.
It also documented 3,970 cases involving the seizure of property, as well as at least 40,602 seizure and confiscation orders affecting nearly 320,000 citizens between 2012 and 2024, as part of what he described as the broader system of dispossession established by the former regime.
Abolishing the court and removing the effects of its rulings
Abdul Ghany stressed that there is an important legal distinction between abolishing the court and removing the effects of its rulings. Repealing the law ends the court’s jurisdiction going forward, but does not automatically erase the consequences of previous rulings unless a clear implementation mechanism is established.
