The Observer view: First lady of evil

Asma al-Assad was complicit in the mass murder and industrial torture of hundreds of thousands of civilians during Syria’s 13-year civil war. That is the most plausible conclusion to be drawn from evidence gathered since the fall of the Assad regime 19 months ago including, over many months, by this newspaper.

She was the wife of a dictator, but that was just the beginning. Over the course of the war she became more closely involved, not less, in regime decision-making at the highest level. She supervised much of the economy through enforcers known as the Lady’s Men. She was considered by the Kremlin a suitable successor to her husband and was instrumental in planning his escape to Russia. She ran a network of orphanages that held children of opposition figures as collateral lest their parents step out of line, and now she is to all intents and purposes at liberty, travelling between Moscow and the Gulf, where the signs are that she would like to make a fresh start with her family.

None of this has yet been tested in a court, and that’s the point. Assad’s impunity in Syria was an affront to humanity. Her apparent immunity since fleeing is an affront to justice. As a Syrian, her husband, Bashar al-Assad, cannot be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court because Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute that underpins the court. But Asma can – and in a UK court too – because she is a British citizen.

So was Shamima Begum, until stripped of her citizenship after travelling to Syria in 2015, aged 15, to marry an Isis terrorist. Some people want Assad to be stripped of her citizenship too, but that is precisely the wrong lesson to draw. The right one is to ensure Assad remains a British citizen so she stays within reach of justice (and to reinstate Begum’s citizenship for reasons of consistency and much else).

Assad is articulate and clever. She had an expensive London education. Those who know her say she can light up a room. All of which can be said of many accomplices to horror, and none of which is a defence. The case against her is as compelling as if she were a six-foot thug trained within earshot of the screams in her husband’s worst detention centres, and it should be heard.

There are practical obstacles. For the ICC or a British court to issue an arrest warrant would be the easy part. Executing it would require the cooperation of, most likely, the UAE, which has signed extradition treaties with the UK and the Netherlands (where the ICC is based) but which seems inclined to welcome the Assads unless the international community objects.

Foreigners have threatened to punish the Assads before: President Obama called their use of chemical weapons a red line, then failed to act when it was crossed. The bereaved parents of murdered Syrian activists might not forgive us for failing again.

Who says democracy isn’t working? So many visitors have now endorsed Count Binface’s complaint about the positioning of the hand dryer at the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge that it’s only a matter of time before it gets moved. And if there were a referendum on renaming HS2, FFS1 would surely win by a billion-pound mile. Baffled readers are invited to refer to Count Binface’s Makerfield manifesto at countbinface.com, which he has repurposed for the Clacton byelection prompted by Nigel Farage’s performative resignation, and scheduled for 13 August, aka Bindependence Day. The manifesto is policy gold, which is more than can be said for anything Farage has said as an elected representative. Whether or not he wins, his time in politics may be drawing to a close. His time as an MEP ended with a taunt to le tout Berlaymont: “You all laughed at me. You’re not laughing now, are you?” Then, as now, it’s hard to laugh at a bad joke. Count Binface is a good one.

Illustrations by Chris Riddell