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After Bashar Assad suffocated children with poison gas in April, Donald Trump retaliated with Tomahawk missiles. But Syria’s victims deserve more than occasional vigilantism.

The crimes continue: photos released by the U.S. State Department suggest the Syrian regime is incinerating the bodies of thousands of murdered political prisoners.

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The Assad government must face judgment by an international court.

In theory, Assad and his top generals should be tried by the International Criminal Court for systemic war crimes and crimes against humanity. In practice, the Russian veto at the United Nations Security Council has made that impossible.

But there is another way, with another court. Syria could be put on trial for torture before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Why torture, and why the ICJ? Torture is the signature crime of the Assad regime. Hundreds have been gassed, but tens or even hundreds of thousands have been tortured, often to death. There are so many prisoners-turned-corpses that the regime has taken to mass incineration.