Extradition, deportation, or abduction?

Syria’s transitional government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, is moving to pursue the former regime’s figures through the courts. The National Commission for Transitional Justice has announced that it is coordinating with Interpol regarding the possible extradition of Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad. At the same time, Damascus is attempting to reintegrate into the international system of judicial cooperation.

In principle, this direction is both legitimate and necessary. Yet it raises a fundamental question: how can the instruments of international justice be prevented from becoming a new weapon of repression? Before such a question can be answered in theory, the case of Emirati dissident Jassim al-Shamsi has already brought it into sharp focus on the streets of Damascus.

To grasp the current debate, one needs to understand the difference between extradition, administrative deportation, and extraordinary rendition.

Judicial extradition is a formal process governed by international treaties. It requires guarantees of a fair trial and adherence to the principle of dual criminality: the alleged offence must be punishable in both jurisdictions. 

Administrative deportation, by contrast, is a unilateral sovereign decision to remove a foreign national from a country. It is usually based on immigration law and does not necessarily require the existence of a crime in another state. 

Extraordinary rendition is something altogether different. In essence, it is abduction disguised in the language of security cooperation, in which states bypass every legal safeguard.

The red notice system used by Interpol – frequently invoked by Syria’s new authorities in their efforts to pursue former regime figures – is widely misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, a red notice is not an international arrest warrant. Rather, it is a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally detain a person pending extradition proceedings.

Experience has shown, however, that this powerful tool can be politicised. The United Nations has repeatedly warned that authoritarian governments sometimes abuse red notices to pursue political opponents in exile. This is despite Interpol’s own constitution, in Article 3, explicitly prohibits interventions of a political character.

These concerns cease to be theoretical when one considers what has reportedly happened in Damascus to a Gulf dissident who sought refuge there. Jassim Rashid al-Shamsi, a former Emirati government official – once an assistant undersecretary in the Ministry of Finance – later became an outspoken critic of policies in Abu Dhabi and an advocate of democratic reform.

In 2013, he was sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison in a mass trial known as the “UAE 94” case after signing a reform petition alongside dozens of academics and lawyers. In July 2024, he received a life sentence in the subsequent “UAE 84” case. Then, in January 2025, the Emirati authorities added him to their domestic list of terrorists as part of a collective designation targeting eleven exiled opposition figures in an act described by Human Rights Watch as a blatant affront to due process.

In December 2024, al-Shamsi travelled to Damascus with his Syrian wife and children, seeking a safe haven after his situation in Turkey had grown precarious following his detention at a Turkish airport in March of that year. What he encountered in Syria, however, appeared disturbingly similar to what he had fled.

On 6 November 2025, Syrian security forces reportedly arrested him without a judicial warrant and without any formal charge. He was taken to an undisclosed location, and all contact with him ceased. His family was not informed of his whereabouts, nor was he granted access to legal counsel. These circumstances fall squarely within the definition of enforced disappearance under international law.

Human rights organisations and UN bodies have since called on the Syrian authorities to halt any transfer of al-Shamsi and to reveal his fate. The Geneva-based rights group Alkarama has warned that extraditing him would severely undermine Syria’s claims of building a state governed by law, sending deeply troubling signals about its commitment to human rights.

Syrians themselves should not forget that many of their compatriots were once victims of precisely such practices. Consider the case of Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian engineer detained in 2002 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and secretly rendered to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for nearly a year before a Canadian inquiry cleared him completely and the government issued a formal apology.

Or the Iranian dissident Rasoul Mazrae, whom Syria deported in 2006 under an Interpol notice despite the United Nations recognising his refugee status. He was arrested upon return and tortured until he was paralysed. Such painful memories ought to serve as the moral compass of a new Syria.

The transitional government in Syria now faces a historic opportunity to build a justice system fundamentally different from the practices of the former regime. Achieving this, however, requires three essential commitments.

First, prosecutions must be grounded in credible criminal evidence and not in political affiliation, sectarian identity, or ideological alignment. Accountability must apply to anyone responsible for abuses, regardless of who they are.

Second, Syria must strictly uphold the principle of non-refoulement, enshrined in Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture. No person should be transferred to a country where they face a serious risk of torture or an unfair trial, even if they are accused of grave crimes.

Third, Damascus must ensure that Interpol mechanisms – particularly red notices – are never transformed into tools of cross-border repression under pressure from other governments.

The international credibility Syria now seeks will not be built through security bargains with authoritarian states, but through a demonstrable commitment to the rule of law.

Pursuing war criminals is a moral and legal duty. On that point, there should be no ambiguity. But the difference between a state of justice and a state of revenge lies in procedures and safeguards.

The case of Jassim al-Shamsi may appear to some as a distant Emirati matter. In reality, it represents a very real test of whether Syria’s new order will choose the path of the rule of law, or slide back into the habits of its predecessor, quietly exchanging dissidents with authoritarian governments and silencing inconvenient voices under the banner of ‘security cooperation’.