Finland charges mother with trafficking children to Islamic State-controlled Syria

Lebanon has extradited a former general to Syria on war crimes charges for the first time since the fall of the Assad regime in 2024. Maj Gen Adel Issa, 67, faces a series of allegations from the civil conflict that erupted in 2011 and concluded with the capital Damascus falling to rebel forces and Assad fleeing. Issa was apprehended on August 8 after completing administrative procedures at the Syrian embassy in Beirut, and was subsequently transferred to Syrian custody.

This transfer was facilitated by pressure from the new Syrian authorities to prosecute former security and military officials who had fled to Lebanon after Assad's downfall. According to the Syrian interior ministry, Issa commanded ground forces in the Eastern province of Deir Ezzor until 2016. He is charged with a range of offenses, including intentional homicide, aiding a crime, killing multiple individuals, torture resulting in death, and crimes of aggression aimed at inciting civil war and sectarian strife, as reported by the ministry.

Issa denied these accusations upon his arrest. The extradition was carried out under a longstanding 1951 agreement between Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian judicial system will now determine if the case will progress to a criminal court. In January, Syria provided Lebanon with a list of over 200 former high-ranking officers it intends to prosecute.

Since gaining power in 2011, Syrian authorities have initiated legal actions against numerous former officials. In January, a Damascus court sentenced Assad and his brother Maher to death in absentia for alleged abuses during the civil war. They fled to Moscow upon the regime's seizure of power. Their cousins, Waseem Assad and Atif Najib, have been arrested in Syria and also sentenced to death.