France trials Syrian officials over war crimes
France is set to trial three Syrian officials working for Assad’s regime of crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to Arab News and agencies on May 21st.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said that “For the first time, French courts will address the crimes of the Syrian authorities, and will try the most senior members of the authorities to ever be prosecuted since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011,”.
The Syrian civil war began with protestors infused with the fever of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Assad’s brutal crackdown against the widespread protests fuelled various anti-government insurgencies – eventually leading to an all out war that has left over 500,000 dead.
Three officials accused of involvement in the deaths of two French Syrian men, Mazzen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, will be tried by the Paris Criminal Court over a four-day period.
READ: Swiss court charges former Syria VP with war crimes
The three officials are Ali Mamlouk, former head of the National Security Bureau, Jamil Hassan, former director of the Air Force intelligence service, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former head of investigations for the service in Damascus.
All three are subject to international arrest warrants and will be tried in absentia.
Mazzen Dabbagh was a senior education advisor at the French high school in Damascus, while his 20-year-old son Patrick was an arts undergraduate at the University of Damascus.
Both father and son were arrested by officers claiming to be part of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Service, in November 2013.
READ: Top Assad officer faces war crimes charge by Swedish court
Organisation FIDH reported that, “Witness testimony confirms that Mazzen and Patrick Abdelkader were both taken to a detention center at Mezzeh Military Airport, which is run by Syrian Air Force Intelligence and notorious for the use of brutal torture,”.
But the pair were only confirmed dead in 2018 – five years after their disappearance.
Syrian authorities notified the Dabbagh family that Patrick died on January 21st, 2014 and his father on November 25th, 2017.
Eye-witness accounts from former detainees informed the investigation, conducted both by French investigators and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability.
They revealed that multiple human rights abuses were carried out in Mezzeh prison, including electric torture and sexual violence.
The Assad regime has been critiqued by human rights group, the Sadnaya Detainees’ Association, over “systematically and deliberately” erasing its crimes by “concealing and destroying evidence that could be used to prove the killings and forced disappearances that occurred after 2011.”
Judges responsible for conducting the preliminary investigation concluded that it was “sufficiently established” that the two men “like thousands of detainees of the Air Force intelligence suffered torture of such intensity that they died.”
France’s trial comes amid a wave of other European governments holding Assad’s officials to account.
The World Court previously tried President Assad on September 28th, 2023 in a landmark case marking the first time an international court has investigated abuses committed during the Syrian civil war.
Arab News / Agencies
