UPDATE, JULY 2024: Syrian war criminal Omar Aroub will not attend the Paris Olympics! Together, we’ve pushed the International Olympic Committee to confirm it won’t welcome a war criminal to Paris 2024 – but we can’t stop here. Instead of holding the Syrian regime to account, some governments are reopening diplomacy with the regime, despite ongoing atrocities – putting refugee rights and Syria’s future at risk. Support our work to stop the Syrian regime from whitewashing its war crimes today.
Syrian regime war criminal Omar Aroub is currently part of the leadership of the Syrian Olympic delegation, and is likely to attend the Olympics in Paris this summer.
We can’t let this happen.
Aroub has a disturbing past. He was part of the executive bureau of the National Union of Syrian Students (NUSS), which brutally suppressed student protests during the Syrian revolution. The NUSS functioned as the regime’s intelligence branch across Syria’s universities and directly committed numerous war crimes.
In Aleppo, Aroub personally ordered NUSS members to throw regime-opposing students from fourth-floor dormitory windows.
After his leadership of the NUSS, Aroub went on to be deputy commander of the Ba'ath Brigades militia, which spearheaded the horrific assault on Aleppo in 2014.
When Aroub previously attended a meeting in France, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it wasn’t aware of his past. Since then, even more evidence has emerged of crimes by the NUSS*. Now, we’re calling on people around the world to sign a petition to ensure the IOC can’t hide behind the same excuse twice.
Together, let's pile pressure on the IOC to face up to Aroub’s crimes and ban him from attending the games in just a few weeks’ time.
Put simply: the Olympics are no place for a war criminal like Omar Aroub.
*Fresh evidence published by the Syrian British Consortium reveals how the NUSS committed torture, detention and gender-based violence in Damascus University.
Image credit: Observers via France 24. Aroub with the Ba'ath Brigades militia; in Paris in August 2023; and with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.