French court sentences senior Syrian officials for crimes against humanity and war crimes – JURIST

The Paris criminal court on Friday sentenced three senior Syrian officials in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, the International Federation for Human Rights reported. The defendants were Ali Mamlouk, advisor to President Bashar Al-Assad and former head of the National Security Bureau, Jamil Hassan, former head of Syrian Air Force intelligence, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former head of investigations of Syrian Air Force Intelligence at Mezzeh Military Airport in Damascus.

This trial follows seven years of investigation led by the war crimes unit of the Paris judicial court, which decided in March to indict the three responsible. In 2013, father and son Mazzen and Patrick Dabbagh were arbitrarily arrested by Syrian authorities and taken to the Mezzeh military airport detention center. After five years of futile attempts to find out their fate, the family received two death certificates attesting to their deaths in 2014 and 2017.

The petition was supported by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, which praised in a joint statement last May the efforts of French investigating judges in another investigation procedure into allegations of chemical attacks against civilians in Douma and Eastern Ghouta in August 2013. In Friday's decision, the organization dedicated the victory to “all victims of torture and enforced disappearance and their families.”

The decision is of crucial importance in France, as it sets an important precedent for the conviction of senior Syrian officials under the Al-Assad regime. In January 2022, the Koblenz Higher Regional Court sentenced a senior Syrian official to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed during the same period. In February 2021, the same court sentenced another official to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting 30 cases of crimes against humanity.