Volume 6, Issue 1, 2025, pp. 1-15

ABSTRACT: Since the original purpose of asylum is to provide weak persons who flee conflicts and other crises occurring in their homelands to foreign territories with protection, international law actors should strict themselves to the human accurate application of asylum rules to achieve the true humanitarian objective of asylum. However, practice discloses several examples of exploiting asylum for evil purposes, i.e., impunity. Perpetrators of gross atrocities against innocents that occur during conflicts in a country seek to enjoy the protection offered by asylum. This presents a severe crisis threatening the applicability and credibility of international law.In this study, the phenomenon of exploiting the asylum notion by a perpetrator to seek impunity is analyzed by studying the case of outposted Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the Russian decision to grant him asylum status on humanitarian grounds, regardless of the judicial endeavors to prosecute him for the atrocities attributable to his regime in Syria. The research aims to point out the negative impacts of political influence on asylum decisions and how this interference promotes international impunity.