For lawyer Mazen Darwish, former director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) and member of the International Federation for Human Rights, it is a “historic day: a new victory for the victims, their families and survivors, and a step on the path to justice.” And, above all, the culmination of a long fight that began ten years ago.
On November 14, French justice issued an international arrest warrant against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, accused of complicity in crimes against humanity for the chemical attacks perpetrated in August 2013 against the populations of Eastern Ghouta, a vast peri-urban and agricultural area located near the capital, Damascus, then controlled by a rebellion at war against the regime.
In addition to Bashar Al-Assad, the warrants target his brother, Maher, de facto leader of the 4th division, an elite unit of the army and praetorian guard of the regime, as well as two generals, Ghassan Abbas, director of branch 450 of the Center for scientific studies and research where chemical weapons were developed, and Bassam Al-Hassan, liaison officer and head of security. All are considered to be at the heart of the chain of command that made the decision to bomb these civilian areas. The August 5 attacks in Adra left at least 450 injured. On August 21, the bombing of Douma marked a further step in the escalation of terror: more than 1,000 people died, thousands more were injured.
An arrest warrant issued against a sitting head of state by a national justice system: the fact is unprecedented. Until now, only the International Criminal Court (ICC) had dared to take this step. In France, the procedure began in March 2021 after a complaint with civil party filing by three non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the SCM, Open Society Justice Initiative and Syrian Archive. The complaint recounts “the horror and the fear, the children crying and the people running”, “the astonishment at the sight of the corpses and the noise of the bombings”. The inhabitants of Douma were then surrounded by conventional artillery fire and attacks with sarin, a deadly nerve agent spreading at the bottom of buildings and in the cellars where the panicked inhabitants had taken refuge.
“A lock has just been blown.”
Initially, it was grassroots activists, including Razan Zaitouneh, a lawyer and human rights activist kidnapped by an armed group in December 2013, who endeavored to gather the first elements of evidence, recalls Mazen Darwish, who pays tribute to her colleague and friend, missing since that date. More than 500 statements from survivors, witnesses from the Syrian security apparatus, hundreds of videos, and numerous descriptions of the chain of command of the Syrian army and its chemical weapons program.
