Three senior Syrian officials to be tried in France for crimes against humanity

Photo showing the statues adorning the entrance to the Paris Assize Court, October 6, 2017. AFP - JACQUES DEMARTHON

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This is a first: three senior officials of the Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad will be tried in France, we learned on Tuesday, April 4. They will appear before an assize court for complicity in crimes against humanity and war offences, as decided by two French investigating judges. They will be tried for the death of two Franco-Syrians.

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Their names were Mazzen and Patrick Dabbagh. The first, Senior Education Advisor at the French School in Damascus, was the father of the second, a student at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in the Syrian capital.

Both men were arrested in November 2013 by Syrian Air Force intelligence agents. They were then reportedly taken to the detention and torture centre at al-Mezzeh military airport. Then, no more signs of life. The regime eventually declared them dead in the summer of 2018. Numerous witnesses – including several deserters from the Syrian army and former detainees from al-Mezzeh – detailed to French investigators and the NGO International Commission for Justice and Accountability (CIJA) the torture inflicted in this prison. Mazzen Dabbagh's house was also confiscated and his wife and daughter were evicted in July 2016. The ownership of the residence "was transferred to the Syrian Arab Republic" which rented it "to the director of the intelligence services of the Air Force for the sum of about 30 euros per year", according to the magistrates, who consider that these facts constitute complicity in the crime of war.

► Read also: Human Rights Watch identifies victims of photos of "Caesar" in Syria

The brother and uncle of the two disappeared has appealed to the French courts. The prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation in 2015 and a judicial investigation into enforced disappearances and torture as crimes against humanity in October 2016.

Today, three senior Syrian officials are referred to the Paris Assize Court: Jamil Hassan, director of the Air Force intelligence services at the time of the disappearance of the two Franco-Syrians, Abdel Salam Mahmoud, head of the investigation branch of the Air Force intelligence services, and finally Ali Mamlouk, former head of Syrian intelligence – became in 2012, director of the National Security Bureau, the highest intelligence body in the country. All three are subject to international arrest warrants. But they are unlikely to be arrested before their trial. They will therefore be judged by default.

The Syrian regime is the target of several lawsuits launched in Europe, particularly in Germany.

(and with agencies)

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Read on on the same topics:

  • France
  • Syria
  • Justice
  • Bashar al-Assad