On Monday, US Republicans and Democrats called on the administration of US President Donald Trump to implement "strict" sanctions imposed on Syria under the "Caesar Law".
In particular, the law provides for the freezing of reconstruction aid and imposing sanctions on the Syrian government and companies cooperating with it unless the perpetrators of the violations are tried.
The law also targets Russian and Iranian entities working with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The "Caesar Law," which the US President signed in December, will enter into force in mid-June.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate and their two deputies said in a joint statement that yesterday «the Syrian people have suffered greatly, and for a long time, in previous periods».
Republicans James Rich, Michael McCall, and Democrats Elliot Engel and Bob Menendez said in their statement that "the administration must strictly enforce Caesar's law on time."
"The Syrian government must put an end to the fighting and give the Syrians a path to reconciliation, stability and freedom," the two senators and two deputies said.
"Caesar" is a pseudonym for a former cameraman in the Syrian Military Police who defected from the Syrian government in 2013, bringing with him 55,000 pictures showing violations in Syrian prisons.
The secret hearing of him in the 2014 Congress was the motivation for drafting this law, which bore his name and was passed in 2019.
During his appearance again before the Senate last March in a session in which he masked his face and wore a sports jacket with a hood that exceeded his size, the defector called on Washington to go ahead in punishing Damascus.
For its part, the Syrian government last week condemned the punitive measures stipulated in the American law, considering that it exacerbated the economic difficulties facing the Syrians.
The Syrian pound has witnessed in the past months a historical decline against the dollar, with inflation worsening in countries sunk into the war since 2011.
After nine years of war, Syria suffers from a severe economic crisis, which was recently exacerbated by measures to address the Covid-19 epidemic.