Human rights lawyers have filed the first cases against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The lawsuits were submitted on behalf of 28 Syrian refugees in Jordan who say they were forced to flee the country.


The legal teams are calling on the ICC to investigate possible crimes against humanity committed since Syria's civil war began in 2011.


The conflict has left more than 360,000 people dead and millions displaced.


Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, meaning that it has not been possible to bring an international criminal case against its government.
But lawyers have used a precedent set by a recent ICC ruling on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to launch two lawsuits this week.




Source:  BBC      News.