Crimes against humanity: three Syrian regime officials sentenced to life imprisonment – 05/24/2024 at 10:10 p.m.

A victory in the “fight against impunity”: three senior officials of the Syrian regime, tried in absentia in France for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, were sentenced Friday to life imprisonment.

The Paris Assize Court found guilty Ali Mamlouk, former head of the National Security Bureau, the highest intelligence body in Syria, Jamil Hassan, former director of the Air Force intelligence services , and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former director of the investigation branch of these services and ordered the maintenance of the effects of the international arrest warrants targeting them.

After the verdict was announced, the audience in the room stood up and applauded.

“This is the first trial to judge and condemn such senior officials of the Syrian regime for complicity in crimes against humanity,” said Clémence Bectarte, who defended several civil parties in this case.

“It is a verdict that resonates for hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are still waiting for justice,” she added.

– “History” –

The three men, who are probably still in Syria, were absent from the trial and therefore tried in absentia, a possibility offered in the French judicial system. They also did not appoint any lawyer to defend them at the hearing.

If in the future they were arrested, they could either acquiesce in the sentence or object, which would lead to a new trial, in first instance and in their presence this time.

They were convicted for having played a role, due to their place in the hierarchical chain, in the forced disappearance and death of Mazzen Dabbagh and his son Patrick.

These two Franco-Syrians were arrested in Damascus in 2013 and transferred to the detention center at Mezzeh airport, run by the feared Air Force intelligence services. They gave no further sign of life until they were declared dead in August 2018.

But the investigations carried out by the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris judicial court made it possible to consider that it was “sufficiently established” that they had suffered torture and that they had died as a result.

At the same time, in July 2016, Mazzen Dabbagh’s wife and daughter were expelled from their house in Damascus, which was requisitioned by Abdel Salam Mahmoud. For these facts, the three accused were found guilty of the war crime of complicity in extortion.

Beyond the case of the Dabbaghs, it is the massive and systematic nature of the abuses committed by the Syrian regime on its civilian population which animated the debates of this unprecedented trial in the history of French justice.

“Impunity is something very hard to live with,” declared Obeïda Dabbagh, brother and uncle of the two victims, after the verdict. “Justice must take place, it’s a very important first step, it’s historic,” he said.

– “Crimes of the present” –

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, July 16, 2023 in Damascus (AFP / LOUAI BESHARA)

In her requisitions, the attorney general worked to demonstrate that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was pursuing “a repressive state policy, implemented by the highest levels” of the hierarchy and “applied locally in each governorate “. The accused constitute, like Bashar al-Assad, “the architects of this system”.

During this trial which began on Tuesday, several experts and survivors of Syrian jails took the stand to describe the Syrian political and prison system and recount the horrors suffered in detention.

Photos from the Caesar file, named after a former military police photographer who fled Syria in 2013 carrying 46,000 gruesome photographs of tortured bodies, were played at the hearing.

“These are not crimes of the past that you are going to judge, these are crimes of the present,” pleaded Mr. Bectarte.

She stressed that this trial represented for thousands of Syrians the “hope” of finding “a space of justice as the situation in Syria remains marked by total impunity”.

Ali Mamlouk notably became special advisor to Bashar al-Assad.

For Me Patrick Baudouin, lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), it is “President Assad himself who is targeted through this opprobrium, this infamy of the condemnation”.

This is “a signal sent to our leaders, to European leaders, that we must not normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad at any price,” urged Mr. Bectarte.