Paris (AFP)

Procedures canceled, confirmed or partially invalidated: the cement manufacturer Lafarge, indicted in 2018 for "financing of terrorism" and "complicity in crimes against humanity", will know this Thursday if the court of appeal validates these lawsuits, challenged by the company.

In addition to Lafarge, three of the group's managers are contesting the charges against them: former CEO Bruno Lafont, former safety director Jean-Claude Veillard and one of the former directors of the Syrian subsidiary, Frédéric Jolibois.

The investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, seized of a "motion for nullity", was initially to decide on October 24 on the validity of the indictments. But the decision was finally postponed by two weeks.

In this case, Lafarge SA, owner of Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS), is suspected of having paid in 2013 and 2014, via this subsidiary, nearly 13 million euros to jihadist groups, including the Islamic State organization ( EI), in order to maintain the activity of its site in Syria, while the country sank into the war.

The group, which assures that it has always had the "highest priority" of "ensuring the safety and security of its personnel", is also suspected of having sold cement from the plant to the benefit of the IS and to have paid intermediaries to buy raw materials from jihadist factions.

As part of the judicial inquiry, opened in June 2017 after complaints from Bercy and several associations, including the NGO Sherpa, eight executives of Lafarge in total were indicted, for "financing a terrorist company" and / or "endangering".

The cement group, which merged in 2015 with the Swiss Holcim, is reproached for its part of the facts of "complicity in crimes against humanity", "financing of terrorism", "violation of an embargo" and "implementation danger of life "of former employees of his plant in Jalabiya (north).

- "Political decisions" -

What specific responsibilities did the company and its leaders have in the payments to terrorist groups? While the existence of remittances to "armed groups" came out of an internal investigation report, Lafarge SA has always challenged its responsibility for the destination of these payments.

At the hearing before the investigating chamber on 20 June, the cementist's defense challenged the reliability of the investigations, carried out from open sources, including UN reports, and dismissed the charges of " complicity in crimes against humanity ".

"No document specifically explaining the constituent elements" of these crimes has been provided and "no investigation likely to gather the necessary evidence" to their characterization has been established, argued the lawyers of the company.

Arguments supported by the Advocate General, who stated in his written submissions that there was "no serious and concordant evidence" showing that the former civilian employees "would have been victims" of the "complicity of the crimes against the humanity "blamed Lafarge.

The representative of the Prosecutor General's Office, however, asked to confirm the indictment of Lafarge and its three leaders for "financing of terrorism."

According to Sherpa, who was a civil party with three associations in this case, the accusation of "complicity in crimes for humanity" was based on "direct evidence", provided by the testimonies of former Syrian employees .

On 24 October, the Paris Court of Appeal, however, annulled the constitution of civil party complainants, dismissing these NGOs file.

Two of them, Sherpa and the European Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights (ECCHR), have announced their intention to appeal in cassation, denouncing a "political decision" as part of "an extremely dangerous "restriction of access of associations to justice".

© 2019 AFP