War crime justice

FRENCH judges ordered three top advisers to the Syrian President Bashar al­Assad to stand trial for their role in complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in a court order signed on April 5.

The accused include Ali Mamlouk, head of security in the Ba’ath party, and intelligence officials Jamil Hassan, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud.

French prosecutors believe the trio is responsible for the deaths of Mazzen Dabbagh, a pedagogical adviser at the French school in Damascus, and his son Patrick, who were arrested in 2013 and subjected to horrific torture that was “so intense that it killed them.”

The trial will be the first in

France directly directed at the Syrian regime, but not the first in Europe. In January 2022, a German court sentenced a former Syrian colonel, Anwar Raslan, to life in prison for crimes against humanity. While the accused are not expected to attend the trial or have lawyers represent them, French judges have taken the unprecedented decision of issuing international arrest warrants for them. The indictment was described as “historic” by the International Federation for Human Rights.