why the trial of the Syrian regime for crimes against humanity is historic

This is the first time that a court is looking into crimes against humanity committed at the highest level by Bashar al-Assad’s entourage in Syria. This unprecedented trial, which begins Tuesday in France, focuses on the Dabbagh affair, named after a father and his son, Franco-Syrians arrested, tortured and disappeared.

It is a historic trial which begins today in France, from Tuesday May 21 to Friday May 24. The Paris Assize Court must judge in absentia three senior officials of the Syrian regime in the Dabbagh affair, named after a father and his son, Franco-Syrians arrested, tortured and left for dead. A man fought for ten years for this trial to exist, Obeida Dabbagh, 70 years old, brother and uncle of Mazen and Patrick. Franceinfo met him.

Night had already fallen a long time ago in Damascus on November 3, 2013, when three or four soldiers knocked on the door of the Dabbagh family, on the fourth floor of a building. “They claim air force intelligence. They ask to see the son for questioning, search the house, take cell phones, computers, and money“, says Obeida Dabbagh, the uncle and brother of the missing. The next evening, they came back around 11 p.m., they blamed my brother for having poorly educated his son“The two men are taken to the premises of the Mezzeh branch at the old Damascus airport, where the intelligence services offices are located.”In this center people are detained who would be interrogated and tortured“, continues Obeida Dabbagh, who will lead a very long fight to find them.

Mazen was an education advisor at the Charles-de-Gaulle high school in Damascus, he was 54 years old. His son, Patrick, aged 19, was a psychology student. According to their relatives, the young man did not hide his hostility to the Syrian regime and his father was very free and very provocative in his comments, but they were never involved in the protest movements of March 2011.

Five years later, on September 6, 2018, Obeida Dabbagh learned upon receiving their death certificates that they had been killed and certainly tortured: Patrick on January 21, 2014, and Mazen on November 25, 2017. Since then, he has been fighting so that their executioners be judged. “We are in a rather sad situation, but I have personal satisfaction that the trial was able to succeed, it is a victory“.

A victory also for magistrate Aurélia Devos, who investigated the Dabbagh affair and who headed the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office for ten years. “We have reached the end of this investigation, the French justice system was able to organize this trial because it can do it in absentia. Arrest warrants have been issued, but this makes it possible to hold the trial, to say things, and to confront the elements of the case with a court which makes decisions“, she explains.

The trial will last four days. Three senior officials of the Syrian regime will be tried in their absence. But “never mind“, analyzes Clémence Bectarte, the lawyer for the Dabbagh family and the FIDH, the International Federation for Human Rights: “This is the highest level of Syrian regime accountability to ever face trial“.

The three accused, Major General Ali Mamlouk, head of general intelligence and state security, Jamil Hassan, director of the air force directorate, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, director of the investigation branch of the air force intelligence service, are the highest-ranking Syrian regime officials ever to be brought to justice.

“The goal is to establish the responsibility of those who ordered these crimes. To show that everything stems from a policy decided at the highest level of the Syrian state, hence the classification as crimes against humanity” .

Clemence Bectarte

at franceinfo

On the stand, three Syrian survivors of Syrian prisons will testify openly. Among them, Mazen Darwish, Syrian lawyer and human rights defender, representative of the SCM, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, in exile in Paris. The man spent three years and eight months in Syrian jails. Like Mazen and Patrick Dabbagh, he was locked up and tortured in Mezzeh: “After days and days of daily torture, they thought I was dead and put me in the hangar“.

Mazen Darwish was personally questioned by one of the three accused, Jamil Hassan, Bashar Al Assad’s inner circle: “Before starting to torture me, he said to me: “So, are you doing the documentation to take us to The Hague?“ There, I understood, it was a way of taking revenge, a way of destroying people and killing the opposition. There was not a moment in the course of the day that was not the subject of suffering and torture.”

Mazen Darwish is due to testify in court these days. The lawyer is delighted that the trial will be translated into Arabic for the public: “It’s very important, justice is not just the verdict. Justice is the entire process. Translating the entire trial is very important so that the new generation in Syria learns what really happened“. In total, in recent years, eleven arrest warrants have been issued by the French justice system against Syrian dignitaries.