ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States on Friday said it welcomes a ruling by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered the Syrian government to halt its torture campaign against its own citizens.
The United Nations-linked court ruling that the Syrian regime must stop using torture and preserve all evidence related to acts of torture is “an important step toward holding the Assad regime accountable for the reported torture of thousands of individuals over the past twelve years,” the US Embassy in Syria, which has been physically closed since the beginning of the crisis in 2011, said in a post on Facebook.
“Victims, survivors, and their families deserve justice and accountability for atrocities committed at the hands of the Assad regime. Together, the international community must push for a durable political solution that will allow Syrians to achieve the justice they rightly deserve,” the embassy added.
The ICJ, also known as World Court, on Thursday, in what is its first legal proceeding on the Syrian civil war, ruled that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime must “take all measures within its power to prevent acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and “prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of any evidence” related to allegations of such acts.
The court handed down its order a day after France issued an arrest warrant for Assad for complicity in war crimes in relation to the use of chemical weapons against civilians.
The UN estimates more than 306,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict that broke out after the Assad regime cracked down on peaceful protesters demanding democratic change. More than 15,000 people died due to torture and 1,510 people were killed in some 222 chemical weapons attacks. 
