the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office opens an investigation in France for “war crimes”

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The AFP reporter was killed on Tuesday in Ukraine during a Russian rocket attack in the east of the country.

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Journalist Arman Soldin, in a photo sent by AFP on May 9, 2023, the day of his death near Bakhmout, Ukraine. (AFP)

The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) opened an investigation in France for war crimes, Wednesday May 10, after the death ofArman Soldin, in Ukraine, on Tuesday. The 32-year-old French journalist, AFP’s video coordinator in the country, was killed in a Russian rocket attack near the besieged town of Bakhmout.

The investigation, entrusted to the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes, aims to determine the circumstances of the death of the journalist.

Several war crimes targeted

The Pnat specified in a press release that the investigation opened at its “crimes against humanity” center targets several war crimes, in particular “willful attack on the life and physical or psychological integrity of a person protected by the international humanitarian law”, “deliberate attack against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians taking no direct part in hostilities”, and “deliberate attack in the knowledge that it will cause incidental loss of human life among the population civilians or injuries among that population which would be manifestly disproportionate to the concrete and direct military advantage expected from the whole attack”.

The anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office has jurisdiction over crimes against humanity and war crimes. Since the end of February 2022, he has opened seven investigations for possible war crimes committed, mainly in February and March of last year, against French people.


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