Paris – After six years of painstaking work, the efforts of human rights organizations in France culminated in the issuance of a warrant for the trial of three senior officials of the Syrian regime before the French Criminal Court, on charges of complicity in the murder of two Syrian citizens with French citizenship, Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were arrested in Damascus in 6.
Patrick al-Dabbagh, a student at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Damascus, and his father was an educational consultant at the French School of Damascus, were arrested in November 2013 by officers who said they belonged to Syria's Air Force Intelligence Service.
For Obaida al-Dabbagh, Mazen's brother, the move represents a moral victory, and a kind of fairness for his brother and nephew, who were liquidated in Syrian prisons.
Dabbagh adds – in an interview with Al Jazeera Net – that the case of his brother and son applies to thousands of other Syrian victims who folded their cases and did not hold any trials convicting those responsible for taking their lives.
Obeida al-Dabbagh said that it is a clear condemnation of specific officials in the Syrian regime, and the issuance of a clear judicial order on them condemning the Syrian regime legally officially and not just words circulated among themselves, expressing his hope that this decision will encourage the families of the victims in Europe to file similar cases, and demand trials for officials in the Syrian regime.
Mazen Al-Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were killed in the detention centers of the Syrian regime (Al-Jazeera Net)
Details of the case
Patrick Dabbagh was 20 when he was arrested at his home in the Mezzeh neighbourhood of Damascus on the night of 3 November 2013. The next day, the same people returned to arrest his father Mazen, and they were taken to a detention center at Mezzeh military airport (west of Damascus), according to FIDH, and in July 2018 the Dabbagh family received official notification of the death of Patrick and Mazen al-Dabbagh.
Syria has not ratified the Rome Statute, and despite attempts to get a Security Council resolution to refer cases of crimes against humanity to the ICC, Russian and Chinese vetoes have repeatedly prevented the ICC from opening an investigation into Syria.
The closure of international accountability prompted Obeida Dabbagh and the families of other victims to go to other countries, such as Germany, Sweden, France and Spain, to file cases based on what is known as external jurisdiction or the principle of universal jurisdiction. Since 2012, Syrian individuals and organizations, as well as international human rights organizations, have filed cases in these countries to investigate crimes of torture, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Based on the dual nationality of Patrick and Mazen Dabbagh, a criminal investigation was launched in France in November 2016.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organization in France, the French League for Human Rights (LDH), together with Obeida Dabbagh (Mazen's brother), and with the support of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), referred the case of Patrick and Mazen to the French War Crimes Unit.
Twenty-three Syrian witnesses agreed to testify in this case, either because they were survivors of the Mezzeh detention center or because they personally confronted a Syrian official accused of these proceedings, until an order was issued by the investigative judge to convict the three officials before the Paris Criminal Court, according to information cited by the organizations involved in the case.
Crimes against humanity
In a statement to Al Jazeera Net, the head of the organization "Justice and Rights without Borders" Francois Duroche: "Since the two victims hold French nationality, the accused can be tried in accordance with the French Criminal Code, but their absence on French territory disrupts the activation of the law of the general jurisdiction and thus the implementation of the sentences that will be issued against them."
For his part, the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression Mazen Darwish testified in the case, and told Al Jazeera Net: "My testimony presented in my personal capacity as a former detainee at Mezzeh Airport in the Investigation and Military Security Branch, about torture, violations and extrajudicial killings, and the other part of the testimony has a technical capacity as director of a human rights institution."
He explained that his institution provided information related to the legal environment, the chain of commands, military ranks and the roles played by Ali Mamlouk, Abdul Salam Mahmoud and Jamil Hassan, in addition to presenting witnesses and victims' families to the court, pointing out that there are many similar cases in France and Europe in general, and work is underway to prepare other files aimed at convicting Syrian officials involved in torture and murder.
The expert in international criminal law Mutasim Kilani, in a statement to Al Jazeera Net, to the importance of this move because war crimes and crimes against humanity do not fall within the statute of limitations, and it also has an important political impact in the face of normalization currently in force with the Syrian regime.
Kilani added that the failure of the accused to appear before the French judiciary will lead to the issuance of arrest warrants that are transferred to the International Police (Interpol), after which criminal judicial rulings will be issued in absentia against them for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Officials involved in the case
According to the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, Ali Mamlouk is the special presidential adviser for security affairs and director of the National Security Bureau since 2012, and a former director of the General Intelligence Directorate, and human rights organizations accuse him of responsibility and supervision of the chemical arsenal in Syria and using it to liquidate political detainees in Palmyra prison.
As for Major General Jamil Hassan, he is the director of Air Force Intelligence and one of the pillars of the security system established by Hafez al-Assad since he took power in Syria in the seventies of the last century.
He is considered one of the most important supporters and supervisors of the violent military repression of the demonstrations that began in 2011, and is accused of involvement in multiple murders, torture and abuses against civilians.
While Major General Abdel Salam Mahmoud, the director of the investigation in the Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, and one of the most important intelligence officers, directly supervises the interrogation and torture operations in the notorious Air Force Intelligence detention centers, and under his direct orders and supervision, large numbers of Syrians were arrested, tortured and killed.
Next step
Since the three officials – Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan, and Abdessalam Mahmoud – are not present on French soil, the trial will take place in absentia under French law, in which case the trial will be shorter than the trial in the presence of the accused, and may last only a few days, and the civilian parties and witnesses will be able to participate and testify.
At the end of the trial, the verdict is expected on the same day, and if the defendants are found guilty, the Paris Criminal Court will issue new international arrest warrants on the basis of their conviction, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.
For his part, Al-Mutassim Al-Kilani said: "The international arrest decision will authorize the 122 signatories to the international extradition agreement to hand over the accused to Interpol, which in turn will hand them over to the French judiciary. I think they will be prisoners inside Syria."
The French War Crimes Unit is working on 85 preliminary investigations and 79 judicial investigations related to international crimes committed outside French territory, including about 10 cases related to crimes committed in Syria.