ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A Swedish court on Monday announced that it sentenced a 55-year-old man to life imprisonment for crimes against international law, detailing that the man participated in the shelling of Damascus’s Yarmouk in 2012 after peaceful protests broke out in the suburb.

“The acts were committed in Syria in 2012 and 2013. The District Court has concluded that the man was guilty of two serious crimes against international law during the armed conflict that was ongoing in Syria at the time of the events,” the Solna District Court said in a statement.

In July 2012, Yarmouk was besieged from the rest of the country under former leader Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Around 18,000 civilians in the city were cut off from provisions of food, medicine, and humanitarian aid, leading to the death of approximately 200 people from starvation and typhus.

The former Syrian regime then completely destroyed the camp with shelling in 2015, according to the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The camp, known as the capital of the Palestinian diaspora in Syria, housed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians before the conflict broke out. In 2023, a Palestinian-Syrian militiaman by the name of Muwafaq al-Dawah was sentenced to life imprisonment over his involvement in war crimes in Yarmouk.

In the first international trial against a Syrian official over the Assad regime’s atrocities during the civil war, a German court in January 2022 sentenced a Syrian secret intelligence officer to life in prison after finding him guilty of torture, sexual violence, and multiple counts of murder. The officer was also a member of the al-Khatib department.

Throughout the country’s 14-year-long civil war, the Assad regime was responsible for myriad war crimes and serious violations of international law and human rights, including the use of chemical weapons, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, and collective punishment.

Assad’s rule was brought to an end in December of 2024, after rebel factions, led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa stormed Damascus and toppled the former president. Sharaa was appointed as Syria’s transitional leader in the aftermath. Assad, meanwhile, flew to seek asylum in Russia, where he is believed to still reside.