French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna announced, on Tuesday, that she supports the trial of Bashar al-Assad, noting that the government of the Syrian regime is accused of killing “hundreds of thousands” of victims and “using chemical weapons” since 2011.
In response to a question, do you support the trial of Assad? “The answer is yes… fighting crime and impunity is part of French diplomacy,” Colonna told France 2.
Earlier, Germany praised the French judiciary’s decision to indict three senior officials of the Syrian regime for participating in crimes against humanity and war crimes in Syria.
On Tuesday, two French investigative judges ordered the trial of these three before the Criminal Court on charges of complicity in the killing of two Syrian-French citizens, Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were arrested in 2013, according to the “Agence France Presse” agency.
The account of the US embassy in Syria confirmed that “Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud must be held accountable for any role they had in the killing and disappearance of Syrians.”
In a tweet on Twitter, the German special envoy to Syria, Stefan Schneck, said that his country “commends the decision of the Paris court to charge Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, for their role in the case of Mazen and Patrick al-Dabbagh.”
The German diplomat considered that the French decision is “an important step towards holding senior officials of the Syrian regime accountable for their crimes,” stressing that his country stands with the victims and their families in their pursuit of justice.
A few days ago, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Criminal Justice, Beth Van Schack, expressed her “delight at the historic decision of the Paris Judicial Court to indict three senior officials of the Syrian regime for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes,” considering that the French decision is “a promising step to achieve Justice for the victims of the regime’s brutal security apparatus.”
How did the trial begin?
In October 2016, the International Federation for Human Rights and the French League for Human Rights referred the case of Mazen and Patrick Abdelkader al-Dabbagh to the French War Crimes Unit.
A judge was appointed to investigate the crimes of enforced disappearance and torture, and a judicial investigation was opened in the case. In October 2018, the investigative judges issued three international arrest warrants against the three officers for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In January 2023, the Public Prosecutor requested an indictment against them and the investigative judge ordered their conviction before the Paris Criminal Court on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, which include willful attacks on life, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment and gross deprivation of liberty.
