In May 2026, two Australian women – mother-and-daughter Kawsar and Zeinab Ahmad – were arrested by the Australian authorities following their return from Syria. The duo have been charged with crimes against humanity of enslavement, as well as with slavery offences including possessing and using a slave and engaging with slave trading.

CIJA provided extensive support to both the original trial and appeals process. The verdicts rendered against Al Abdallah relied on CCTV footage collected by CIJA investigators. The collected footage detail Da’esh operations within a children’s hospital in Aleppo which the group occupied and used as a headquarters and detention facility. CIJA’s Directors of Management and External Relations and Operations and Investigations each provided expert witness testimony in the course of the trial and the subsequent appeal.

Nerma Jelacic spoke with Carolina de Lima for El Pais about the drive to document the crimes of the Assad regime during the conflict and the mobilisation of Syrian activists and NGOs to seek justice wherever possible, in the absence of an international response.

Levant 24: Part 1 of an extended interview with Nerma Jelacic (Director of Management and External Relations) about Syria's transitional justice process, the historic significance of Syria's first public trials after decades of Assad-era impunity.

afik A. was convicted in the Netherlands today for 19 counts of torture, rape and sexual violence as crimes against humanity, carried out in his role as the Head of the Interrogation Department of the pro-Assad paramilitary, the National Defence Force, in Salamiyah, Hama between 2013-2014.

Carlotta Gall for the New York Times spoke to Nerma Jelacic (CIJA Director for External Relations) at the start of the trial of Brigadier General Al-Halabi and Lieutenant Colonel Abu Rukbah in Vienna, who are on trial for torture, sexual coercion, aggravated coercion and serious bodily harm, carried out in Raqqa between 2011-2013.

On Sunday, the Damascus University School of Law hosted an International Workshop on International Criminal Justice and Prosecution Mechanisms, in cooperation with CIJA and the Syrian Emergency Taskforce.

On 04 May 2026, a Swedish court convicted Mahmoud S. a 55 year-old man with Swedish nationality was convicted for two counts of war crimes for his role in a pro-Regime militia in Al Yarmouk, southern Damascus.

A delegation of senior war crimes prosecutors from Donetsk region in Ukraine has arrived in London today to discuss their work to investigate and prosecute crimes relating to culture, cultural property and heritage. The visit forms a part of a joint project led by Blue Shield International (BSI) and The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

On Friday 20 March, Sabri Essid was convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity against the Yezidis. The Cour de Assises in Paris found Essid guilty of direct perpetration of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against two Yezidi women and children in Syria. He was also convicted of complicity in genocide for participating in the transfer of an enslaved Yezidi woman and her children in Syria.

On 16 March 2026, Samir Ousman al-Sheikh was convicted by the US Central District Court for California for three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture carried out in his role as the Head of Adra Prison.

On 05 March 2026, CIJA and Temple Garden Chambers hosted a panel discussion, “The Future of International Criminal Law in a Changing World,” at The London Library in what was a thoughtful and engaging evening.

CIJA’s Executive Director Bill Wiley joined The Torontonian Podcast, where he discussed the moral and physical courage of CIJA’s Syrian investigators, who spent 14 years collecting evidence of the Assad regime’s brutality during the civil war.
Listen here: https://torontonianpodcast.ca/ep207/