France's top court to examine arrest warrant for Syria's Assad

RFI

3 July 2024 at 2:19 am·1-min read

Prosecutors have asked France's highest court to review the legality of a French arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over deadly chemical attacks on Syrian soil in 2013.

According to Syria's opposition, one attack on the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 killed around 1,400 people – including more than 400 children.

Prosecutors said Tuesday they had made the request to the Paris Court of Cassation on judicial grounds on Friday – two days after another appeals court upheld an arrest order issued in November.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), lawyers' association Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) and the Syrian Archive – an organisation documenting human rights violations in Syria – filed the initial complaint.

However, SCM head Mazen Darwish criticised Tuesday's move, saying: "We view [the] filing of the appeal as a political manoeuvre aimed at protecting dictators and war criminals".

Legal question

"This decision is by no means political. It is about having a legal question resolved," the prosecutor's office at the court said in a statement.

France is believed to be the first country to issue an arrest warrant for a sitting foreign head of state.

However, prosecutors from a unit specialising in the investigation of "terrorist" attacks have sought to annul it, although they do not question the grounds for such an arrest.

To date, the anti-terror prosecutors have only contested the warrant for Bashar al-Assad's arrest.

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Legal question

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