section_path: Policies/Justice
section_name: Justice
paragraph_text: Justice
  
  Immediately following the Fall of Damascus, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed to "hunt down and punish" senior officials of the previous regime, who he deems to be implicated in "torturing the Syrian people". Rewards have been promised for anyone who can provide information about "officials who took part in war crimes". After being declared the President of Syria, al-Sharaa declared that he would "pursue the criminals who shed Syrian blood and committed massacres and crimes".
  
  In mid-January 2025, a resurfaced video of the Minister for Justice Shadi al-Waisi triggered a public scandal in Syria. The video, shot in 2015, appears to show al-Waisi, then a member of the Al-Nusra Front, organizing and taking part in a public execution in Idlib of two women accused of "corruption and prostitution" under Sharia law. An Interim Government official confirmed the identity of al-Waisi in the footage, stating that "the content of the video is an enforcement of the law during a specific time and place, where the procedures were conducted following the valid laws at the time and within a procedural agreement", adding that it "reflects a phase that has been surpassed". Several Syrian groups have called for al-Waisi to resign and be replaced as minister as a result of the video.
  
  There have been hundreds of reports across Syria of civilians belonging to the Alawite sect and other religious minorities being murdered and persecuted by HTS forces following the collapse of the Assad regime. On 8 March 2025, the UK-based SOHR reported that Syrian security forces and pro-government fighters had committed a massacre of more than 750 Alawite civilians during clashes in western Syria.