PARIS (AP) \u2014 France\u2019s highest court on Friday upheld some of Syrian ex-leader Bashar Assad\u2019s personal immunity as a head of state while green-lighting possible future war crime warrants, drawing criticism from human rights lawyers and Syrian activists.<\/p>\n
The Cour de Cassation upheld Assad\u2019s head-of-state immunity, but added that since he is no longer in office, \u201cnew arrest warrants may have been or may be issued against him for acts that may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom our side as a victim, this is a huge mistake. This will support another dictatorship to keep doing this kind of crime \u2014 they know they will enjoy immunity,\u201d said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Center for Media, which collected evidence of war crimes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \n AP AUDIO: France\u2019s highest court upholds some of Bashar Assad\u2019s legal protections, but permits future warrants\n <\/p>\n AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports a French court is to decide if former Syria leader Bashar Assad can be tried for a chemical attack.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a sad day for us,\u201d Darwish said.<\/p>\n \u2018Missed opportunity for justice\u2019<\/p>\n The president of the Cour de Cassation, Christophe Soulard, said in the ruling that 19 judges had declined to lift Assad\u2019s immunity, but that a new arrest warrant could be issued to pave the way for his trial in absentia in France over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013<\/a>. <\/p>\n Human rights lawyers had sought to enable prosecution of leaders linked to atrocities while they are in power, not just when they leave. But international law currently forbids it.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder current international law, crimes against humanity and war crimes are not exceptions to the principle of jurisdictional immunity for sitting foreign heads of state,\u201d Soulard said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe court\u2019s ruling is a missed opportunity for justice,\u201d 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 \u201cleaves the door open to the prosecution of Assad.\u201d<\/p>\n Silver lining for some<\/p>\n The court also ruled on a case against a former Syrian government finance minister in Assad\u2019s government, allowing that he could be prosecuted. Adib Mayaleh\u2019s lawyers have argued that he too had immunity under international law. That is to some a silver lining in the court\u2019s ruling by establishing in France the right for courts to go after heads of state when they leave office and even current high-ranking officials. \u201cThis is a huge step, but not an absolute victory in the fight against impunity,\u201d said lawyer Cl\u00e9mence Witt, who with Jeanne Sulzer brought the case against Assad to the court. She said that the French courts can now for the first time issue warrants for high-ranking officials currently in power with adequate evidence. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery official \u2014 except head of state, head of government and head of foreign affairs \u2014 can be prosecuted in France if we have evidence of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity,\u201d Witt said.<\/p>\n War crimes accusations<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, despite promises that the country\u2019s new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria<\/a> that includes and represents all of its communities.<\/p>\n The International Criminal Court isn\u2019t bound by head of state immunity and has issued arrests warrants for leaders accused of atrocities \u2014 like Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine<\/a>, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza<\/a>, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Syrian government<\/a> denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, an accusation that the opposition rejected, because Assad\u2019s forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to possess sarin.<\/p>\n Assad held onto power, aided militarily by Russia and Iranian-backed proxies, until late 2024, when a surprise assault by rebels swept into Aleppo and then Damascus, driving Assad to flee to safety to Russia on Dec. 8, 2024.<\/p>\n Possibility of warrants<\/p>\n New warrants after Friday\u2019s ruling in France could lay the groundwork for the former leader\u2019s trial in absentia or potential arrest, if he travels outside Russia.<\/p>\n Any trial of Assad, whether in absentia or if he leaves Russia, would mean this evidence could then \u201cbe brought to light,\u201d Pena said, including an enormous trove of classified and secret evidence amassed by the judges during their investigations. <\/p>\n Syrians often took great personal risk to gather evidence of war crimes. 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 \u201cchain of command\u201d for the Syrian government\u2019s chemical weapons production and use.<\/p>\n \u201cWe link it directly to the president himself, Bashar al-Assad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Fighting against impunity<\/p>\n Syria today remains beholden to many awful legacies of the Assad dynasty. Poverty, sectarianism, destruction and violence still haunt the country.<\/p>\n Syrian authorities are now investigating nearly 300 people for crimes during several days of fighting<\/a> on the coast earlier this year. The new interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Damascus have pledged to work with the United Nations on investigating further war crimes<\/a> of the Assad government and the civil war.<\/p>\n While disappointed in the verdict in France, Darwish is working on 29 cases against Assad and other figures who have fled to Russia, the Gulf, Lebanon and Europe. He said that many Syrians hope Assad sits for a fair trial in Syria.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be done in Damascus, but we need also a lot of guarantees that we will have a fair trial even for this suspect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His organization has already received requests to bring to court war crimes accusations against those involved in recent bloodshed in southern Syria.<\/p>\n \u201cSo anyone, whatever his name, or the regime, or their authority, we will keep fighting this type of crime,\u201d Darwish said.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Sam McNeil reported from Brussels. John Leicester contributed to this report from Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 France\u2019s highest court on Friday upheld some of Syrian ex-leader Bashar Assad\u2019s personal immunity as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[13217,105358,25646,6505,109792,30,45053,2000,299,36,4179,4582,8614,109794,2003,7136,109793,109791,26262,332,6500,105357,333,2858,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-295999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-activism","9":"tag-ahmad-al-sharaa","10":"tag-bashar-assad","11":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","12":"tag-christophe-soulard","13":"tag-courts","14":"tag-damascus","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-france","18":"tag-general-news","19":"tag-human-rights","20":"tag-international-agreements","21":"tag-jeanne-sulzer","22":"tag-law-enforcement","23":"tag-legal-proceedings","24":"tag-mariana-pena","25":"tag-mazen-darwish","26":"tag-rodrigo-duterte","27":"tag-russia","28":"tag-syria","29":"tag-syria-government","30":"tag-vladimir-putin","31":"tag-war-crimes","32":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114925511987778108","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}