France has made an important step in the fight against impunity for the perpetrators of international crimes committed in Syria and throughout the world.
The National Assembly passed a bill to authorize the approval of the international judicial cooperation agreement between the French Government and the United Nations Organization, represented by the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) for Syria. The bill was referred to the Senate for examination.
Parliamentary sources ruled out any difficulty in obtaining the approval of the Senate in the next few days, noting that the French Constitution stipulated that in case of disagreement, the last say would go to the National Assembly.
The French Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Justice issued a joint statement, which noted that the agreement “will allow information to be transmitted from French courts to the Mechanism (MIII), which is not possible under current law.”
“It is thus in keeping with the priority France attaches to the fight against impunity for the perpetrators of international crimes,” it stated.
The statement read: “In 2015, the Foreign Ministry reported to the Paris State Prosecutor, on the basis of Article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, atrocities likely to have been committed by the Syrian regime... The documents passed on enabled the Paris Prosecutor’s Office to open a preliminary investigation into “crimes against humanity”, relying in particular on photographs taken in military hospitals between 2011 and 2013 by “César”, a Syrian former military photographer. More than 40 investigations and judicial inquiries on Syria are currently underway in France.”
It added: “In a ruling of 24 November 2021, the Court of Cassation deemed it necessary for the definition of an offense comparable to that in French law (evidence of “an attack against a civilian population in fulfillment of a concerted plan”) to exist in Syrian law in order to recognize French courts’ extraterritorial competence with regard to international crimes.”
The statement noted that the relevant French ministries would closely monitor forthcoming judicial decisions.
“Depending on those decisions, our ministries stand ready to swiftly set out the changes, including legislative changes that should be made to enable France to continue resolutely fulfilling its steadfast commitment against impunity for international crimes,” it underlined.
