Bashar al-Assad targeted by an arrest warrant from French justice for complicity in crimes against humanity

Bashar al-Assad is the target of an arrest warrant issued on November 14 by the French justice system, franceinfo learned on Wednesday from a judicial source. The warrant was issued against the current Syrian president, but also against three of his services’ executives, for complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes, during the chemical attacks committed in August 2013 in Eastern Ghouta.

According to American intelligence, these sarin gas attacks left more than 1,000 dead, the vast majority civilians, on August 21, 2013, in bombings in this region near the capital, Damascus, then held by the Free Syrian Army. .

At least nine new attacks since 2013

In March 2021, the Franco-Syrian NGO Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression filed a complaint for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity, in view of the images of these attacks, where we saw children, women and men dying after being victims of an attack with sarin gas, a nerve gas considered a weapon of mass destruction banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria did not signed only in October 2013.

According to the Quai d’Orsay, ten years later, “the Syrian regime has still not provided complete information regarding the state of its chemical weapons stockpiles” And “the repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime since 2013 shows that its stocks have not been destroyed and that they remain a threat to the Syrian people and to regional and international security.”

The ministry specifies that since 2013, “Independent investigations by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have established that the Syrian regime is responsible for at least nine chemical weapons attacks since its accession,” 10 years ago now.