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Swiss federal prosecutors say they have referred former Syrian Vice President Rifaat Assad, the uncle of the war-battered country's current president, for trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly ordering murder and torture more than four decades ago.

The attorney general's office said Tuesday that Assad, 86, is accused of ordering the crimes in Syria in February 1982 while serving as commander of defence brigades that carried out an attack in the city of Hama during a conflict between the military and the Islamist opposition. Security forces a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city that year.

Even if convicted, Assad is unlikely to serve time in Switzerland. After he was convicted in France of illegal use of Syrian state funds and sentenced to four years in prison, his nephew, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, , ending his over 30 years of exile in France.

President Hafaz al-Assad ordered his brother Rifaat al-Assad to quell a Sunni revolt in the city of Hama in 1982 which erupted into one of the worst massacre's in modern Arab history. An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people were massacred. 

The case was brought by the advocacy group Trial International under the principle of "universal jurisdiction," which allows prosecution of heinous crimes in a country that may not have been where they took place.

Swiss authorities determined that Assad was in Switzerland when the official probe was launched by Swiss investigators.

Prosecutors will present their case to the federal criminal court in the southern city of Bellinzona, the attorney general's office said, without specifying a date.