US Republican Representative Joe Wilson announced today, Friday, that the Senate voted to repeal the Caesar Act imposed on Syria during the rule of the deposed regime, while Damascus welcomed what it described as a “historic step.”
In a post on the
Wilson announced on June 12 that he had submitted legislation to Congress to completely repeal the “Caesar Act” and its sanctions on Syria.
For his part, Syrian Finance Minister Muhammad Yusser Barneyah considered that the US Senate’s vote on the decision to cancel the Caesar Act means “the success of Syrian diplomacy in getting rid of the last and most severe US sanctions imposed on the country.”
Bernieh said in a post on Facebook that the next step is to align the House of Representatives (through a joint committee with the Senate) to approve the same article in the Ministry of Defense budget, leading to US President Donald Trump signing the new budget before the end of the year, and thus the repeal of the Caesar Act coming into effect.
In turn, Syrian Information Minister Hamza Al-Mustafa said that this vote represents “a historic moment for the new Syria and the struggles of its people.”
Al-Mustafa added in a post on the
At the end of last June, Trump signed an executive order to end sanctions on Syria for the purpose of supporting reconstruction and building “a Syria that does not provide a haven for terrorist organizations,” as he put it.
The executive order at the time did not overturn the Caesar Act, which Congress had approved in 2019, but it legally paved the way for freezing some of its sanctions, as an American president cannot amend or suspend a law issued by Congress.
Caesar is the pseudonym of former Syrian military police photographer Farid Al-Madhahn, who defected from the Syrian regime in 2013, bringing with him 55,000 photos showing torture and violations in Syrian prisons.
American representatives presented a bill called “Caesar” in 2016 with the aim of “stopping the wholesale killing of the Syrian people, encouraging a peaceful settlement through negotiation, and holding Syrian human rights violators accountable for their crimes.”
After discussions, Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved the law in December 2019, and the US President signed it as part of the 2020 Defense Budget Act.
The law imposed sanctions on Syrian individuals and institutions involved in war crimes, and prohibited financial dealings with influential figures in the regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad or those connected to him.
It also stipulated the punishment of any local or foreign entity that invests or deals with Syria in sectors such as energy, aviation, construction, and banking. It also targeted companies and countries supporting the Syrian regime at the time, such as Iran and Russia.
