Judges issued an arrest warrant for the uncle of the current Syrian president last year, in connection with war crimes committed in 1982.

The judgement by the Federal Criminal Court was published on Wednesday, a year after the court ordered the Federal Office of Justice (FOJ) to put out a wanted notice.

The delay was reportedly due to a request by prosecutors to keep the warrant under wraps to increase its chances of success.

In 2021, the Office of the Attorney General already asked the FOJ to put out such a warrant, but the office refused, saying Switzerland was not competent since al-Assad was neither a citizen nor a resident here.

The FOJ also said that no Swiss were among the victims of the 1982 massacre in Hama, Syria, which was the background to the case.

However, the Federal Criminal Court disagreed, and said a Swiss procedure was legitimate on the grounds that the prosecution opened its investigation in 2013 while Rifaat al-Assad was staying in a Geneva hotel.

This presence is sufficient to establish Swiss jurisdiction in the prosecution of war crimes, the court said; it also makes it possible to launch an international search warrant.

Following through on it is likely to be more complicated however, as Rifaat – the younger brother of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad – returned to Syria in 2021 after 37 years in exile.

The organisation Trial International, which in September 2013 filed the initial complaint against Rifaat al-Assad for war crimes committed in February 1982, said it welcomed the decision to demand an extradition.

However, “we can obviously regret that it was necessary to wait for the latter’s return to Syria to demand that he appears before Swiss courts”, a legal adviser to Trial International said.

In Syria, Rifaat al-Assad led the Defense Brigades, an elite unit accused of having committed atrocities and massacres during a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama in 1982.

Riots and military operations at the time reportedly left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead.