This night of August 21, 2013, Lubna Alkanawati sleeps with the windows open. The heat is stifling in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb east of Damascus, the Syrian capital. In a half-sleep, she hears towards “2 a.m” ambulance sirens, “which had never been so intense” since the start of the civil war in the country. This woman, now 43 years old and living in France, ventures onto her balcony. Electricity and internet are cut in this neighborhood under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and the telephone no longer works. “I shouted to people who were out in the street ‘what’s happening?’ They said ‘chemical attack!'”remembers the Syrian activist and feminist activist, civil party in an unprecedented legal procedure.
Ten years after this chemical attack attributed to the Bashar Al-Assad regime, French justice issued an arrest warrant against the Syrian president, still in power, and three other regime officials for complicity in crimes against humanity. Among the victims – more than 1,100 died and 5,000 were injured, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) – include Franco-Syrians.
Never has a country issued an arrest warrant against a sitting head of state. But the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) requested the cancellation of this mandate, on the grounds that it is usually reserved for international jurisdictions, such as the International Criminal Court. He wishes “see this issue decided by a higher court”he explained to AFP before his request was examined in mid-May. The Paris Court of Appeal is due to deliver its decision on Wednesday June 26. “This judgment is decisive. Recognizing, as the Pnat asserts, that Bashar Al-Assad benefits from immunity – a real procedural shield – would amount to protecting him from any prosecution in France and would establish a situation of impunity”, observe with franceinfo Clémence Witt and Jeanne Sulzer, lawyers for several civil parties and the four NGOs constituted civil parties in this case.
“I know very well that this arrest warrant will not bring Bashar Al-Assad back to prison. What is very important to me, as a survivor and witness to these attacks, is the legal recognition of what he ‘happened.”
Lubna Alkanawati, civil partyat franceinfo
Lubna Alkanawati was not physically harmed that night. The few kilometers separating her apartment from the points of impact – the towns of Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Irbin – protected her from sarin gas, the neurotoxic effects of which she had already experienced during a previous attack in May of the same year, in Harasta. After helping affected residents, she suffered for three days from a “great fatigue, vomiting and blurred vision”This time, the activist put her skills as a graphic designer to the service of victims and their loved ones: “I spent a week printing death certificates and photos of people killed or missing.” The memory of a man who asked her to print the names of 22 members of his family for a ceremony at the mosque particularly haunts her.
Among the victims, 300 women and children died of asphyxiation in their sleep, according to the SNHR, which emphasizes that those responsible knew that the atmospheric conditions that night would be conducive to the toxic gas being deposited at ground level instead of being carried away. by the wind. Lubna Alkanawati, who analyzed the impact of gender on crimes committed in Syria, also points to the role of heat in the late treatment of women. “They slept in scantily clad clothing. Due to tradition, the rescuers, mostly men, did not know how to handle them. This delay increased the number of victims”she explains, confiding that she went to bed well covered every night that followed, for fear of being surprised in her sleep by a chemical attack.
When she fled Syria in 2014, threatened with death by an opposition group for her commitment to women’s rights, Lubna Alkanawati was not able to take with her all the evidence accumulated about this attack. But she testified at length before thes investigating judges of the crimes against humanity division of the Paris judicial court after her arrival in France in 2021, where she obtained refugee status. Despite the asylum, this “single mother”as it defines itself, has “always afraid” of the Syrian regime, because the “witnesses to chemical attacks do not benefit from any protection”.
Taher Hijazi was able to take with him into exile all the documents accumulated on the chemical attacks of 2013. This man, now aged 37, joined France with his wife and five-year-old child in 2019 and also obtained refugee status there. This law graduate also remains haunted by the images he filmed with his cell phone in the streets and hospitals of Goutha on August 21. At the time, he documented all gas attacks, at the risk of being exposed himself. He describes the same symptoms as Lubna: “Difficulty breathing, facial burning, vomiting, headache, fatigue…” “The children, more fragile, suffered a lot, they did not breathe well until they died, it was unbearable”he slips, depicting “a disaster”.
Taher Hijazi says he waited and hoped until September 2013 for an American and French intervention after the Ghouta attack. And for good reason. There “Red line” set by the then American president, Barack Obama, had just been crossed. For his French counterpart, François Hollande, the massacre “born [pouvait] nor [devait] remain unpunished”. But as reported The world At the time, the United States backed down and accepted the Syrian regime’s offer to dismantle its chemical arsenal. The fact remains that the agreement was not respected since according to the SNHR, 183 chemical attacks were carried out after the Ghouta massacre.
“All Syrians were waiting for the United States and France to bomb the Syrian regime. But that didn’t happen and they used more chemical gases afterwards.”
Taher Hijazi, civil partyat franceinfo
Manal* also called for Western intervention. This French woman in her forties had been living in Syria for a very long time when she experienced a first chemical attack in Douma, at dawn on August 5, 2013, and was also affected by the French legal proceedings. As in Ghouta later, the inhabitants of this town, near Damascus, then under the control of the FSA, found themselves caught between bombs coming from the sky and gas spilled at ground level. “The instructions were to go as high as possible into the buildings, but there were always bombingstestifies Manal*, refugee with her husband and two children on the upper floors. We breathed sarin, but very diluted. For a few hours, I had to sit down to breathe.” This attack left more than 400 injured, according to NGOs.
The family fled Douma and settled in Eastern Ghouta. Fifteen days later, the horror begins again. Installed three kilometers from the points of impact, Manal and his relatives have trouble hearing the warning messages about a new chemical attack, covered by those of the “bombings in all directions” : “It was impossible to get on the roof, we expected to be pulverized at any moment.” A “night of absolute terror” for the young woman, who remains “glued” to her children while her husband goes out to see what’s going on. “He saw lots of corpses. I was certain that no one was alive outside”remembers Manal.
Two days later, the family took refuge in an area controlled by the regime. But living conditions are not better there, with “lots of illnesses, malnourished, dehydrated people”. And we must keep quiet. “trauma” chemical attacks. Manal and his people expect the presidential palace to be bombed any day by the West. And then “we began to understand that we were going to be abandoned to our fate. We clung to the hope that the free army would succeed in overthrowing the regime… it ended with our departure” to France, in 2015. A few months later, France launched an operation against the Islamic State in Syria, after the attacks of November 13. Despite his French nationality, Manal experiences this exile very badly and harbors great resentment towards the French state. : “We were left to die.”
“It’s a great pain, we are alive but when we see so many deaths, we no longer know if it’s a chance or not.”
Manal, civil partyat franceinfo
Manal, who suffers from survivor’s guilt, says he crossed “a step” in his “psychological state” after having been “listened to by the judges”. Like the other civil parties, she hopes that the arrest warrant against the Syrian president will be maintained. “If we cannot really stop him, we must make him accountable for what happened”, explains the complainant. “The extraordinary gravity of the facts on the one hand, in this case the repeated commission of chemical attacks against its own population, and on the other hand the solidity of the investigation file, which establishes the presumed participation of the Head of State, call for a decision finally allowing the French and Syrian victims to access justice.”support his lawyers Clémence Witt and Jeanne Sulzer.
Even though the Syrian regime is the subject of legal action in several countries and has been under American and European sanctions since 2011, it is seeking to emerge from its isolation after thirteen years of a war that has been more than half a million dead. “This arrest warrant may be a small step, but it is a very important step for uscontinues Lubna Alkanawati. He gives us the strength to continue and to say in place of those who can no longer speak: ‘Look, we suffered, we died, we deserve justice’.”
*The first name has been changed