A French court has found three Syrian officials of the regime of Bashar al-Assad guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes, sentencing them in absentia to life imprisonment on Friday after a landmark trial in Paris.
The verdicts against Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to Assad, Jamil Hassan, who was head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019 and a member of Assad’s entourage, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre, send a strong message about the long arm of international justice.
The judges ordered that international arrest warrants against the three officials should remain in force. The verdict gives some hope of justice for the families of thousands of Syrians believed to have been tortured to death by intelligence officials working for the Damascus regime.
Mamlouk, 78, Hassan, 72, and Mahmoud, who is in his early 60s, were charged with complicity in the arrest, torture and death of student Patrick Dabbagh, 20, and his father, Mazzen, 48, both Franco-Syrians.
Patrick Dabbagh was in the second year of an arts and humanities degree at the University of Damascus when he was arrested at his home in November 2013. His father, Mazzen, 48, who worked as a senior education adviser at the French Lycée in Damascus, was arrested the following day.
Witnesses said that father and son were taken to the detention centre at Mezzeh military airport run by the Syrian air force intelligence service, where prisoners have been subjected to appalling torture.
Children and elderly people tortured at Syria military prison, Paris court told
Witnesses have told a Paris court how children and elderly people considered enemies of the ruling Syrian regime were tortured in a notorious military prison, at the trial of three high-ranking officers close to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
The three are being tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deaths of two French-Syrian dual nationals, Patrick Dabbagh, a 20-year-old student, and his father, 48.
Ali Mamlouk, 78, the head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to Assad; Jamil Hassan, 72, who was head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019 and a member of Assad’s entourage; and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, who is in his early 60s and is intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre where the father and son are believed to have been held, are accused of complicity in their arrest, torture and deaths.
The trial at the Palais de Justice, a first in France, highlights the determination of European states to prosecute crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows countries to try perpetrators regardless of their nationality or where the crimes were committed.
The accused will not be in court but campaigners say the case bolsters calls for universal justice for the families of more than 111,000 people who have disappeared in Syria since 2011.
Patrick was arrested by members of the Syrian air force intelligence unit on 3 November 2013. Mazzen Dabbagh was taken the following day. Both are believed to have been held at Mezzeh prison. In 2019, the Syrian authorities issued certificates stating Patrick had died in January 2014 and Mazzen in November 2017. No causes of death were given and the bodies were not returned to their family.
Obeida Dabbagh, 72, told the court his brother Mazzen, who worked as an education counsellor at the French lycée in Damascus, was the youngest of five sons and had “never had any problems with the Syrian intelligence services”.
Ahead of another donor conference for Syria, humanitarian workers fear more aid cuts
Living in a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Rudaina al-Salim and her family struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs such as cooking and washing. Their encampment north of the city of Idlib hasn’t seen any aid in six months, AP reported.
“We used to get food aid, hygiene items,” said the mother of four. “Now we haven’t had much in a while.”
Al-Salim’s story is similar to that of many in this region of Syria, where most of the 5.1 million people have been internally displaced — sometimes more than once — in the country’s civil war, now in its 14th year, and rely on aid to survive.
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations have for years struggled with shrinking budgets, further worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts elsewhere. The wars in Ukraine and Sudan, and more recently Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the focus of the world’s attention.
Along with the deepening poverty, there is growing hostility in neighboring countries that host Syrian refugees and that struggle with crises of their own.
Aid organizations are now making their annual pitches to donors ahead of a fundraising conference in Brussels for Syria on Monday. But humanitarian workers believe that pledges will likely fall short and that further aid cuts would follow.
“We have moved from assisting 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria,” Carl Skau, the U.N. World Food Program’s deputy executive director, told The Associated Press. He spoke during a recent visit to Lebanon, which hosts almost 780,000 registered Syrian refugees — and hundreds of thousands of others who are undocumented.
Two Hezbollah fighters said killed in alleged Israeli drone strike in Syria
An alleged Israeli drone strike in central Syria killed two fighters from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group on Saturday, Lebanese media and a war monitor said.
The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV didn’t say if there were casualties, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said two Hezbollah members were killed and several others wounded in the drone strike.
“An Israeli drone fired two missiles at a Hezbollah car and truck near the town of Qusayr in Homs province, as they were on their way to Al-Dabaa military airport, killing at least two Hezbollah fighters and wounding others,” said the Observatory.
It was the third strike against Hezbollah targets in Syria in about a week.
On Monday, Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area, which is close to the Lebanese border, killed eight pro-Iranian fighters, said the Observatory, a Britain-based monitor with a network of sources in Syria.
Car explosion kills at least one in Syria’s Damascus
A car explosion has killed one person in Syria’s capital Damascus, Syrian news agency SANA reported, without identifying the victim. One person was killed when an explosive device exploded in their car in the Mezze district, according to Al-Jazeera.
The Mezze neighbourhood of Damascus houses the Iranian consulate, destroyed last month in a strike blamed on Israel. The attack at the time killed seven people including two Iranian generals and a member of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, and triggered a direct Iranian military assault on Israel for the first time, prompting fears of a region-wide war.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the UK-based opposition war monitor the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said the man killed in the explosion was a Mezze resident who carried a card identifying him as a Syrian army officer. Abdurrahman said the dead man had close ties to Iran.
Security incidents, including blasts targeting military and civilian vehicles, occur intermittently in the capital of war-ravaged Syria.
The explosion comes against a backdrop of heightened regional tensions, including Israel’s war on Gaza.
Hours after the blast in Damascus, an Israeli drone attack reportedly targeted a car and a truck outside the western Syrian town of Qusayr, northwest of Damascus, close to Lebanon’s border, the Observatory and a Beirut-based pan-Arab TV station reported.
“An Israeli drone fired two missiles at a Hezbollah car and truck near the town of Qusayr in Homs province, as they were on their way to al-Dabaa military airport, killing at least two Hezbollah fighters and wounding others,” the Syrian Observatory said.
