Whitehall officials confirmed that possible legal action was being examined against Fawaz Akhras, after emails he sent that advised his son-in-law on managing the revolt against his rule, were leaked.
British officials are examining potential charges against President Bashar al-Assad's British father-in-law as they try to bring Syrian officials and their relations to face European courts over alleged links to the sanctioned regime.
Whitehall officials confirmed that possible legal action was being examined against Fawaz Akhras, a cardiologist who lives in Acton, west London, after emails he sent that advised his son-in-law on managing the revolt against his rule, were leaked.
Lawyers have also examined emails showing purchases by the president and his wife, Asma, involving British-based individuals, which contributed to the decision to place Mrs Assad on a sanctions list of prominent Syrians.
An official source said the work of the legal teams was complex and they had not reached a conclusion that a case was possible. "This could be one way to increase the pressure on Assad," the official said. "We must not let him slip into a comfort zone."
William Schabas, an international law expert at Middlesex University, said individuals in Britain could face prosecution as accomplices to the regime. "It's possible to prosecute someone who had been an adviser or accomplice without having tried the principal perpetrator," he said. "After all, if someone in the UK was inciting al-Qaeda they would be picked up in a heartbeat."
In a separate move, Britain and America have given extensive backing to war crimes investigations against Syrian officials. The Foreign Office sent a team of lawyers and forensic experts to the Middle East to compile evidence of abuses.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, announced a grant for a Syria accountability clearing house to store records of regime abuses at a meeting this month in Turkey.
China and Russia have vetoed the use of the International Criminal Court to try war crimes charges similar to those levelled against the Gaddafi family in Libya last year. The hunt for alternatives is focusing on national courts, especially in those countries that allow universal trials for crimes committed overseas.
Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the United Nations commission of inquiry into rights abuses in Syria, is believed to be keen to expose complicity that could be taken up by national prosecutors.
"If someone is suspected of being a war criminal, they can be arrested anywhere," said a UN official. "The archives the commission is assembling could be used by any party to ensure that prosecutions happen." Pinheiro has catalogued painstaking details of leading regime figures, and identified how military, security and political leaders led the repression of protests. The commission presented a letter of evidence against 50 senior Syrians to the UN's human rights council for use in war crimes trials.
Andrew Clapham, a legal expert at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said evidence could be taken up by a variety of authorities and brought years later.
"The actual prosecution can be up to 20 years later," he said. "If someone is British and Syrian and implicated in war crimes there is no reason why a trial could not proceed in the UK."
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