In the already long soap opera of the Lafarge affair, it is a hard setback for the cement manufacturer: the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed, Wednesday, May 18, the indictment of the French group under the control of the Swiss Holcim for “complicity of crimes against humanity” regarding his activities until 2014 in Syria. This indictment is in addition to those of “financing a terrorist enterprise” and “endangering the lives of others”.
The decision of the Court of Appeal had been awaited since the judgment of the Court of Cassation of September 2021 annulling the cancellation of the indictment for “complicity in crimes against humanity” decided by the investigating chamber, in November 2019, at the request of Lafarge. The judges of cassation had considered that complicity did not imply the will to participate nor the approval of these crimes but the simple knowledge of the fact that the terrorist groups benefiting from the group’s payments were themselves committing crimes against humanity, especially with this money.
Lafarge’s actions, revealed by The world in 2016, aimed to ensure the continuity of production at the Jalabiya cement factory in northern Syria, inaugurated in 2010, a year before the start of the revolution in Syria. This factory, the largest in the Middle East, represented an investment of nearly 700 million euros and the French group did not want to abandon it at any price to rebel groups who would surely have dismantled it and sold it in spare parts. to scrap dealers.
Several million euros paid to terrorist groups
But the maintenance of activity at all costs, as well as the passage of the company’s trucks and its employees, were monetized by Lafarge to the tune of several million euros, paid in 2013 and 2014 to terrorist groups such as the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State organization (IS), which held roadblocks in the area. The payments were made by the group’s Syrian subsidiary, Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS). After several hostage-taking of employees released against ransoms paid to armed groups, the factory closed in the fall of 2014, when the site was taken over by the jihadists of the IS.
These hostage-takings and the chaotic evacuation of the employees, who had to manage almost alone to reach the Turkish border, give rise to a third charge: that of “endangering the lives of others” , demanded by former Syrian employees who have joined as civil parties.
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