Bashar al-Assad

The United States on June 17 imposed sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's wife and dozens of others as it vowed a vast pressure campaign under a new law that has already rattled the war-torn nation's economy.

Two alleged former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany on April 23 accused of crimes against humanity in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assad's regime.
       

The global chemical weapons watchdog on April 8 for the first time explicitly blamed Syria for toxic attacks, saying President Bashar al-Assad's air force used the nerve gas sarin and chlorine three times in 2017.    

The first trial of suspected members of Syria's Bashar al-Assad's security services for crimes against humanity, including torturing and killing opposition activists, will start next month, a German court said on March 10.    

Turkey has a long history of conducting extreme operations with its secret services. The most traumatic of these for us was against the Greek minority in Istanbul in September 1955. On August 21, 2013, it was accused of launching a deadly sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb, killing hundreds.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a phone conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on March 4.

According to a statement by the Communications Directorate, Erdoğan and Macron discussed the issues of Idlib and migrants.

Turkey's Defense Ministry said on March 2 that a warplane of the Syrian regime's forces had been shot down in the course of a Turkish-led military offensive launched in northwest Syria to push back the forces of Bashar al-Assad.

The downed jet was described as an L-39 warplane in the ministry's statement.

A committee formed by Libya's renegade commander Khalifa Haftar visited Syria to meet officials of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Ankara sought for the United States to send Patriot missiles to Turkey for back-up in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 27 reiterated his call for an "immediate ceasefire" in northwestern Syria following a deadly airstrike by Syrian regime forces on Turkish troops in Idlib province.