Last week, largely ignored by mainstream media, there appeared the following story about Syrian refugees in Sweden. And unusually, it was good news: lawyers representing victims of chemical weapons called for a probe into officials in Bashar al-Assad’s government. Under Swedish law allegations of war crimes can be investigated regardless of where they were committed. Similar legal actions, under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, have already been launched in Germany and France.

 The attacks, which took place in 2013 in Eastern Ghouta, and in 2017 against Khan Sheikhoun, have been extensively documented. Hundreds of civilians, including children, were killed. “By filing the complaint, we want to support the victims’ struggle for truth and justice,” Hadi al-Khatib, founder and director of Syrian Archive - one of four NGOS involved - said in a statement.

 Syrian opposition activists claim that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons more than 300 times to terrorize civilians. A UN-commissioned investigation to identify those behind chemical attacks concluded in 2017 that Syrian government forces had used both chlorine and sarin gas. But Damascus denies that charge. Assad even referred notoriously in an interview to “actors” posing as dead children.

 In another positive development a few days later the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague voted to strip Syria of its voting rights and other privileges for failing to declare its extensive CW arsenal. France spearheaded the initiative and called the sanctions "a good day for multilateralism". The UK said it was "vital" for the OPCW's "credibility”.

 It also shed interesting – though hardly surprising-  light on Assad’s friends: Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan all voted in support of Syria. But every EU member state voted to strip Syria of those rights: the result was 87 for, 15 against, with 34 abstentions.

 Still, sceptics – and outright conspiracy theorists – remain active in western countries as well, with the support of Moscow. There was a stunning reminder of that the other day with an impressively detailed report in Newlines about attempts to undermine the OPCW’s investigation of a 2018 Douma chemical weapon attack with the help of Russian diplomats and state media.

 The background to this bleak story is that pro-Assad disinformation took off following Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in September 2015. It was then that Kremlin-backed propaganda organs went into overdrive in an attempt to exonerate Assad of atrocities and war crimes, typically by blaming them on his jihadi enemies like Isis (Daesh), the al-Nusra Front or third parties.

 In Britain, the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media is the most prominent of these organisations. It benefits from the respectability normally associated with academics (though not with any expertise on Syria). It was founded by Professor Piers Robinson of the University of Sheffield, a believer in long-debunked conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks on the US.

 It is also marred by other individuals associated with defending Assad at any price. Vanessa Beeley is one of them who has repeatedly accused the White Helmets, an internationally funded rescue organization, of staging chemical attacks in Syria.  A recent BBC documentary MayDay, about the suicide of James Le Mesurier, the founder of the White Helmets, fuelled that controversy.

 Joby Warrick, the author of Red Line, a riveting account of  how Barack Obama tried and failed to rid Assad of his chemical weapons, argues that the world had to wait a long time for justice to be done in the wake of the Yugoslav wars – especially Bosnia -  in the early 1990s. But Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, and Ratko Mladic, the perpetrator of the Srebrenica massacre, were eventually convicted.

 The recent trial in Germany, ending in the conviction of a Syrian called Eyad al-Gharib, because of his role as an intelligence officer serving the Assad regime, was widely seen as a step in the right direction. It was the first time that any European court had convicted a Syrian for crimes against humanity.

 “The scale and depth of Syrian suffering and injustice are an affront to all of humanity, and these efforts show that humanity has begun to respond,” the Syrian Network for Human Rights said in response to the OPCW vote. “But justice to date is still not commensurate to the injustices suffered. For serious and comprehensive justice to be achieved, the root causes of the atrocities must be addressed. Universal jurisdiction provides a narrow path to limited criminal accountability.”

 Still, not all the news about European attitudes is good: from Denmark came the decision that Syrian refugees  - especially women (men can claim protection from compulsory military service) - could return home as Damascus and neighbouring areas are considered safe – a ruling condemned by Human Rights Watch – and happily not followed by other countries.

 But there was also an inspiring item on Twitter about Syrian refugee boy called Abdullah, originally from Homs, who lives in Scotland. Not only had he acquired English, but Gaelic as well - a tribute to human resilience in the face of inhuman behaviour and a poignant reminder of the eternal power of education.

by:IAN BLACK