French court finds three Syrian officials guilty of war crimes

RFI

May 25, 2024 at 5:58 a.m.·2 min read

A Paris court has sentenced three members of Syria's Assad regime to life imprisonment for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in a landmark trial.

It is the first time that France has held a trial on abuses committed during Syria's civil war since 2011.

The accused – Ali Mamlouk, former head of the Syrian secret services and current security adviser to Bashar al-Assad; Jamil Hassan, former head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit; and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former head of investigations at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre – were all tried in absentia.

The three men are believed to be in Syria. There are international warrants for their arrest and the judges ordered they should remain in force.

Many in the court galleries stood up to applaud after the ruling was announced on Friday evening.

"It is a verdict that will resonate for hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are still waiting for justice," said Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for some of the victims in the case.

Widespread abuses

The three officials were charged with complicity in the deaths of two French-Syrian men, Mazzen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were arrested in Damascus in 2013 and never seen again. They were declared dead in 2018.

At the time of his arrest, Patrick Dabbagh was a 20-year-old arts and humanities student at the University of Damascus. His father was a senior education adviser at the French school in Damascus.

Ahead of the trial, judges from France's special war crimes tribunal said 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".

(with AFP)

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Widespread abuses

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