Press Releases

Rep. French Hill (AR-02) issued the following statement after a German court found a former Syrian officer guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in torturing detainees at a jail near Damascus, Syria.

“Yesterday's verdict confirms the decade-long mass murder of Syria's innocent civilians, led by the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad. This is only the first step in a long road of justice owed to the hundreds of thousands of innocent souls lost in Syria due to the torture and slaughter coordinated by Assad.

“The Biden Administration needs to use the power granted by the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act to sanction Assad and the Syrian government for their crimes against the Syrian people. The United States must work with our allies to actively pursue prosecution against Assad and other high-ranking Syrian officials who played a role in the mass murders. The Biden Administration must also develop a strategy to expose and dismantle Assad's industrial scale of illicit production and distribution of the illicit narcotic Captagon, as my bill H.R. 6265, the CAPTAGON Act calls for.

“Unless the United States acts, Assad will not only continue to be a threat to the Syrian people, but he will pursue any means necessary to survive both economically and militarily with the support of his co-conspirators in Russia and Iran. I urge the Biden Administration to revisit the powers granted by the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act and take a firm stand in support of the Syrian people.”