French justice on Wednesday issued international arrest warrants for Syrian President Bashar Assad, his brother and two army generals for alleged involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including a 2013 chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb in rebel power, lawyers for Syrian victims said.
The arrest warrants cover the president, his brother Maher Assad and generals Ghassan Abbas and Bassam al-Hassan.
“The French judiciary’s issuance of arrest warrants against the head of state, Bashar al-Assad, and his associates constitutes a historic judicial precedent. It is a new victory for the victims, their families and the survivors, and a step on the path to justice and sustainable peace in Syria,” the lawyer Mazen Darwish, founder and director general of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), a civil party to the case, said.
Investigating judges from the crimes against humanity division of the Paris judicial court have been investigating the chemical attacks in Syria since April 2021. The investigation was sparked after a civil party complaint from three organisations: the SCM, the Open Society Justice Initiative, and Syrian Archive, a Syrian-led project documenting human rights violations and other crimes committed in Syria.
Similar civil cases against the Damascus regime have been lodged with courts in Sweden and Germany.
apnews.com/article/france-syria-war-crimes-assad-arrest-warrant-c3c1c7e8529eb4dd0ca13484617da4d4
h/t 16 Blocks