Latest news with #crimes against humanity
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
France's top court annuls arrest warrant for Bashar al-Assad
France's highest court has cancelled an arrest warrant for the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country's civil war. The Cour de cassation declared the warrant invalid under international law, which gives heads of state personal immunity from prosecution in foreign courts while they are in office. The judges ruled there were no exceptions, but said their decision did allow for a new arrest warrant to be issued now Assad was no longer a head of state. Since December 2024, Assad has been living in exile in Russia after rebels led by Turkish-backed forces took control of Syria. Mariana Pena, a senior legal counsel with the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), said the ruling was a 'missed opportunity' for the court to make an exception on the waiving of immunity for heads of state accused of the most serious crimes, but added the campaign to bring Assad to justice would continue. A French court issued the international arrest warrant in November 2023 in response to two chemical weapons attacks in Syria. In the first, in August 2013, the banned gas sarin is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, in the district of Ghouta, in eastern Damascus. In the second, in April 2018, 450 people were injured in the towns of Adra and Douma. The case that led to the arrest warrant was brought by civil parties including survivors of the attacks, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression and the OSJI. Its cancellation was initially sought by France's anti-terrorism office on the grounds of head of state immunity. Last year, the Paris court of appeal upheld the warrant following a request for annulment, only for the anti-terrorism office and the public prosecutors' office to lodge a fresh appeal. At the appeal hearing, the OSJI argued that immunity should not apply when leaders perpetrated grave crimes against their own population. France has previously issued international arrest warrants for three other senior Syrian officials, including the former leader's brother Maher al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Cour de Cassation did not rule on these warrants, which are still in effect. The sarin attack in 2013 almost led to US intervention in Syria's civil war. Barack Obama, then US president, had warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons would be a 'red line', but backed down from military action after Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion In 2020, a report by the UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use accused Syria of using sarin gas on the battlefield. The report was hailed by rights groups as a landmark moment with implications for war crimes investigations. The Syrian conflict began with protests and pro-democracy rallies in 2011 and escalated into civil war the following year. Up to 610,000 people are believed to have died.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
French supreme court cancels arrest warrant for Bashar al-Assad
France's supreme court has cancelled an arrest warrant for the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country's civil war. The Cour de cassation declared the warrant invalid under international law, which gives heads of state personal immunity from prosecution in foreign courts while they are in office. The judges ruled there were no exceptions, but said their decision did allow for a new arrest warrant to be issued now Assad is no longer a head of state. Since December 2024, Assad has been living in exile in Russia after rebels led by Turkish-backed forces took control of Syria. Mariana Pena, a senior legal counsel with the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), said the ruling was a 'missed opportunity' for the court to make an exception on the waiving of immunity for heads of state accused of the most serious crimes, but added the campaign to bring Assad to justice would continue. A French court issued the international arrest warrant in November 2023 in response to two chemical weapons attacks in Syria. In the first, in August 2013, the banned gas sarin is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people including hundreds of children in the district of Ghouta in eastern Damascus. The second, in April 2018, saw 450 people injured in the towns of Adra and Douma. The case that led to the arrest warrant was brought by civil parties including survivors of the attacks, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression and the OSJI. Its cancellation was initially sought by France's anti-terrorism office on the grounds of head of state immunity. Last year, the Paris court of appeal upheld the warrant following a request for annulment, only for the anti-terrorism office and the public prosecutors' office to lodge a fresh appeal. At the appeal hearing, the OSJI argued that immunity should not apply when leaders perpetrated grave crimes against their own population. France has previously issued international arrest warrants for three other senior Syrian officials, including the former leader's brother, Maher al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Cour de Cassation did not rule on these warrants, which are still in effect. The sarin attack in 2013 almost led to US intervention in Syria's civil war. Barack Obama, then US president, had warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons would be a 'red line', but backed down from military action after Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion In 2020, a report by the UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use accused Syria of using sarin gas on the battlefield. The report was hailed by rights groups as a landmark moment with implications for war crimes investigations. The Syrian conflict began with protests and pro-democracy rallies in 2011 and escalated into civil war the following year. Up to 610,000 people are believed to have died in the conflict.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
France's highest court upholds some of Bashar Assad's legal protections
France's highest court on Friday upheld some of Syrian ex-leader Bashar Assad's personal immunity as a head of state, while allowing possible future war crime warrants, drawing criticism from human rights lawyers and Syrian activists. The Cour de Cassation upheld Assad's head-of-state immunity, but added that since he is no longer in office, 'new arrest warrants may have been or may be issued against him for acts that may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity'. The decision is a blow to activists who had hoped the court would set aside the immunity, a decision that could have had far-reaching consequences for other leaders accused of atrocities. 'From our side as a victim, this is a huge mistake. This will support another dictatorship to keep doing this kind of crime, they know they will enjoy immunity,' said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Centre for Media, which collected evidence of war crimes. 'It is a sad day for us,' Mr Darwish said. The president of the Cour de Cassation, Christophe Soulard, said in the ruling that 19 judges had declined to lift Assad's immunity, which could have paved the way for his trial in absentia in France over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013. Human rights lawyers had said that it was high time to enable prosecution of leaders linked to atrocities while they are in power, not just when they leave. But international law forbids it. 'Under current international law, crimes against humanity and war crimes are not exceptions to the principle of jurisdictional immunity for sitting foreign heads of state,' Mr Soulard said. Assad, the former leader of Syria now in exile in Russia, retained no lawyers for these charges and has denied that he was behind the chemical attacks. 'The court's ruling is a missed opportunity for justice,' said Mariana Pena, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, which helped bring the case to the court. But she said that the ruling 'leaves the door open to the prosecution of Assad'. The court also ruled on a case against a former Syrian government finance minister in Assad's government, allowing that he could be prosecuted. Adib Mayaleh's lawyers have argued that he had immunity under international law. For more than 50 years, Syria was ruled by Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar. During the Arab Spring, rebellion broke out against their tyrannical rule in 2011 across the country of 23 million people, igniting a brutal 13-year civil war that killed more than 500,000 people, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Millions more fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. The Assad dynasty manipulated sectarian tensions to stay in power, a legacy driving renewed violence in Syria against minority groups, despite promises that the country's new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all of its communities. The International Criminal Court is not bound by head of state immunity and has issued arrests warrants for leaders accused of atrocities – like Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. The Syrian government denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, an accusation that the opposition rejected, because Assad's forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to possess sarin. The United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, but Washington settled for a deal with Moscow for Assad to give up his chemical weapons' stockpile. Assad survived in power more than a decade longer, aided militarily by Russia and Iranian-backed proxies. Activists and human rights group accuse him of using barrel bombs, torture and massacres to crush opponents. But then in late 2024, a surprise assault by rebels swept into Aleppo and then Damascus, driving Assad to flee to safety to Russia on December 8, 2024. New warrants after Friday's ruling in France could lay the groundwork for the former leader's trial in absentia or potential arrest, if he travels outside Russia. Any trial of Assad, whether in absentia or if he leaves Russia, would mean this evidence could then 'be brought to light', Ms Pena said, including an enormous trove of classified and secret evidence amassed by the judges during their investigations. Syrians often took great personal risk to gather evidence of war crimes. Mr Darwish said that in the aftermath of a chlorine gas attack in Douma, for example, teams collected witness testimonies, images of devastation and soil samples. Others then tracked down and interviewed defectors to build a 'chain of command' for the Syrian government's chemical weapons production and use. 'We link it directly to the president himself, Bashar al-Assad,' he said. Syrian authorities are now investigating nearly 300 people for crimes during several days of fighting on the coast earlier this year. T The interim authorities in Damascus have pledged to work with the United Nations on investigating further war crimes of the Assad government and the civil war.
France 24
6 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
France's top court annuls arrest warrant against Syria's Assad
The Court of Cassation ruled there were no exceptions to presidential immunity, even for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. But its presiding judge, Christophe Soulard, added that, as Assad was no longer president after an Islamist-led group toppled him in December, "new arrest warrants can have been, or can be, issued against him" and as such the investigation into the case could continue. Human rights advocates had hoped the court would rule that immunity did not apply because of the severity of the allegations, which would have set a major precedent in international law towards holding accused war criminals to account. French authorities issued the warrant against Assad in November 2023 over his alleged role in the chain of command for a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,000 people, according to US intelligence, on August 4 and 5, 2013 in Adra and Douma outside Damascus. Assad is accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the case, though Syrian authorities at the time denied involvement and blamed rebels. The French judiciary tackled the case under the principle of universal jurisdiction, whereby a court may prosecute individuals for serious crimes committed in other countries. An investigation -- based on testimonies of survivors and military defectors, as well as photos and video footage -- led to warrants for the arrest of Assad, his brother Maher who headed an elite army unit, and two generals. Public prosecutors approved three of the warrants, but issued an appeal against the one targeting Assad, arguing he should have immunity as a head of state. The Paris Court of Appeal in June last year however upheld it, and prosecutors again appealed. French investigating magistrates in January issued a second arrest warrant against Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes for a bombing in the Syrian city of Deraa in 2017 that killed a French-Syrian civilian.
Russia Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
ICC jails former football chief for war crimes
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced the former chief of the Central African Republic (CAR) football federation, Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, to prison after finding him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ngaissona was convicted alongside Alfred Yekatom, a rebel leader known as 'Rambo', during a ruling in The Hague on Thursday, with judges handing them prison terms of 12 and 15 years respectively. 'The convictions were across multiple charges, including murder, attacks against a civilian population, forcible transfer, torture and other inhumane acts, and persecution,' the court said in a press release. The charges relate to their roles as leaders of a Christian-dominated armed group called Anti-balaka (meaning 'anti-machete'), which carried out deadly attacks against Muslim communities in the Central African Republic between December 2013 and December 2014. Anti-balaka was formed in 2013 to counter the Muslim-majority Seleka coalition, which seized power after ousting then-President Francois Bozize. Prosecutors accused Ngaissona, also a former government minister, of supplying funds and weapons to Anti-balaka units operating in towns including Bossangoa, Gaga, and Berberati. Yekatom, a former parliamentarian, is said to have commanded an estimated 3,000 fighters and directed attacks in areas such as the capital, Bangui, and Lobaye. According to court documents, witnesses described his forces using grenades, machetes, and assault rifles in raids that terrorized Muslim civilians. Both men had pleaded not guilty when the trial opened in February 2021, after being extradited to The Hague. The ICC said it heard from around 75 witnesses, including victims and insiders from the armed groups. 'The Chamber found Mr Ngaissona and Mr Yekatom guilty beyond any reasonable doubt of a number of war crimes and crimes against humanity,' the court stated. The Central African Republic has experienced decades of militant violence and political insecurity, including six coups, since gaining independence from France in 1960. UN peacekeepers have been deployed under the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) since 2014, but rebel violence against the government has persisted.
