Syria's parliament votes to scrap Assad-era terrorism court, nullify rulings

FILE PHOTO: A billboard with a picture of Syria's Bashar al-Assad shows damage by bullet holes, in Damascus, Syria, December 16, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo Syria's parliament voted on Wednesday to abolish a counter-terrorism court established during the reign of former President Bashar al-Assad and nullify the legal effects of its rulings.The counter-terrorism court was set up in 2012 in an effort to crush an uprising against Assad's rule, and was reportedly used to prosecute thousands of anti-Assad Syrians on terrorism-related charges.Wednesday's decision formalises the court's abolition, after Syria's new authorities had already been treating it as defunct.In June 2025, President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree dismissing 67 judges who had served on what he then described as the "abolished Counter-Terrorism Court". Syria's constitutional declaration of March 2025 had also called for undoing the effects of what it termed unjust rulings handed down by the court, including the return of confiscated property.In 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Committee said the 2012 law that created the court had failed to provide adequate judicial guarantees, and it raised concerns ov...