My final piece will be about Germany’s adherence to the legal principle of ‘universality’ and the Syrian community’s changing climate of faith in German legal institutions after the fall of Assad in Syria. I want to cover the Trial on the Siege of Yarmouk, which was what I was writing about initially and is a centerpiece to the discussion on an ongoing universal jurisdiction case, but I want to write more generally about the history of universal jurisdiction in Germany, how it has impacted the Syrian migrant community, what German justice systems mean to Syrians after repatriation efforts enacted by the government, etc.

What does a system like universal jurisdiction mean to Syrians in a nation increasingly plagued by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment? What does it mean when so many of them, after countless years of living in German society, still haven’t obtained their German citizenship? What does it mean when both universal jurisdiction and asylum are both rooted in a legal philosophy of universality that Germany claims to stand for, but only the former is being actively embraced? I would like to weave the stories of Syrian-Germans, lawyers, and experts in universal jurisdiction to craft my final piece. I would ideally like to extend/incorporate the profile of Hesham Moamadani in the final feature — Moamadani was a Syrian refugee, but recently gained his German citizenship and can enjoy its benefits. How has his experience differed from his friends, who are Syrian but have not yet obtained citizenship? I also want to incorporate my interview with Syrian lawyer Anwar Bunni, who, even after experiencing the horrors of Assad’s government, remained robustly faithful to the German legal system, as well as my interview with Berit, who spoke with me about anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany and EU law.