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France Orders Syrian Officials to Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity

Ali Mamlouk. (AFP)
Ali Mamlouk. (AFP)
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France Orders Syrian Officials to Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity

Ali Mamlouk. (AFP)
Ali Mamlouk. (AFP)

French judges have ordered on Tuesday senior officials of the Syrian regime to stand trial for collusion in crimes against humanity, a first in France, according to court documents seen by AFP.

The order, signed last Wednesday, says the three officials are charged with complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes.

They are Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud.

French prosecutors believe the trio, who are not expected to show up for the trial or have lawyers represent them, are responsible for the deaths of two French-Syrian nationals, Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were arrested in 2013.

The International Human Rights Federation (FIDH), Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, and the Human Rights League, which are civil plaintiffs in the French case, have also applauded the decision to call for a trial.

"This decision opens the possibility, for the first time in France, of a trial for three senior officials in the repressive Syrian regime."

Mamlouk was formerly head of the Syrian intelligence services. In 2012 he took over as director of the National Security Office.

Hassan was head of the Syrian Air Force intelligence unit at the time of the disappearance of the two Franco-Syrians.

Mahmoud was responsible for the investigation branch of the same air force unit.

France has issued international arrest warrants for the three.

A preliminary investigation into possible forced disappearances and acts of torture constituting crimes against humanity was launched in 2015 after the Dabbagh family filed a complaint.

Obeida Dabbagh welcomed the trial order, telling AFP it signaled to the Syrian government that "one day the impunity will end".

Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for FIDH, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, and the Dabbagh family said: "It is essential that this trial, which is part of a long fight against impunity, qualifies the regime’s crimes and holds accountable, even by default, its highest officials."

Patrick Dabbagh was born in 1993 and was a student at the College of Arts and Humanities in Damascus, while his father, Mazen, was a principal educational advisor at the French School in Damascus and was born in 1956. They were detained in November 2013 by officers who claimed to belong to the Air Force Intelligence.

According to Mazen Dabbagh's brother-in-law, who was also arrested but released two days later, the two were taken to Mezzeh prison, which reports showed it witnesses torture.

They were not heard from again, and in 2018 the government declared them dead, dating Patrick's death to 2014 and Mazen to 2017.

According to statements by witnesses including defectors from the Syrian army or former detainees in Mezzeh to French investigators and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an NGO, they were beaten with iron bars on the soles of their feet, subjected to electric shocks and had their fingernails torn out.

The French investigating judges said it "seems sufficiently established" that they were subjected to torture "so intense that it killed them".

The house of Dabbagh was confiscated in July 2016 and his wife and daughter were kicked out. Its ownership was moved to the "Syrian Arab Republic".

Mazen Darwish, the president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, said that following three trials that led to three convictions in Germany, it is time that France expresses its wish to take part in the battle against the impunity of crimes committed in Syria against civilians.

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Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
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Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)

Fighting in Sudan's Kordofan region that has killed hundreds and ongoing violence in Darfur — the epicenters of the country's conflict — have worsened Sudan's humanitarian crisis, with aid workers warning of limited access to assistance.

The United Nations said more than 450 civilians, including at least 35 children, were killed during the weekend of July 12 in attacks in villages surrounding the town of Bara in North Kordofan province.

“The suffering in Kordofan deepens with each passing day,” Mercy Corps Country Director for Sudan Kadry Furany said in a statement shared with The Associated Press. “Communities are trapped along active and fast changing front lines, unable to flee, unable to access basic needs or lifesaving assistance.”

Sudan plunged into war after simmering tensions between the army and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, escalated to fighting in April 2023. The violence has killed at least 40,000 people and created one of the world’s worst displacement and hunger crises, according to humanitarian organizations. In recent months, much of the fighting has been concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

On Thursday, the UN human rights office confirmed that since July 10, the RSF has killed at least 60 civilians in the town of Bara, while civil society groups reported up to 300 people were killed, the office said.

A military airstrike on Thursday in Bara killed at least 11 people, all from the same family, according to the UN office. Meanwhile, between July 10 and 14, the army killed at least 23 civilians and injured over two dozen others after striking two villages in West Kordofan.

An aid worker with Mercy Corps said his brother was fatally shot on July 13 during an attack on the village of Um Seimima in El Obeid City in North Kordofan, Grace Wairima Ndungu, the group’s communications manager told AP.

Furany said that movement between the western and eastern areas of the Kordofan region is “practically impossible.”

The intensified fighting forced Mercy Corps to temporarily suspend operations in three out of four localities, with access beyond Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, now being in “serious doubt,” Furany said, as a safe sustained humanitarian corridor is needed.

Mathilde Vu, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who is often based in Port Sudan, told the AP that fighting has intensified in North Kordofan and West Kordofan over the past several months.

“A large number of villages are being destroyed, burned to the ground, people being displaced,” she said. “What is extremely worrying about the Kordofan is that there is very little information and not a lot of organizations are able to support. It is a complete war zone there.”

Marwan Taher, head of mission with humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, told the AP that military operations in Kordofan heightened insecurity, prompting scores of people to flee to Darfur, a region already in a dire humanitarian situation.

The NRC said that since April, Tawila has already received 379,000 people escaping violence in famine-hit Zamzam Camp and Al Fasher.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration recently reported that over 46,000 people were displaced from different areas in West Kordofan in May alone due to clashes between warring parties.

Taher said those fleeing El Fasher to Tawila walk long distances with barely enough clothes and little water, and sleep on the streets until they arrive at the area they want to settle in. The new wave of displacement has brought diseases, including measles, which began spreading in parts of Zalingi in Central Darfur in March and April as camps received people fleeing Kordofan.

Aid workers also warned about ongoing fighting in Darfur. Vu said there have been “uninterrupted campaigns of destruction” against civilians in North Darfur.
“In Darfur there’s been explicit targeting of civilians. There’s been explicit execution,” she said.

Shelling killed five children Wednesday in El Fasher in North Darfur, according to UN spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay. Meanwhile, between July 14 and 15, heavy rains and flooding displaced over 400 people and destroyed dozens of homes in Dar As Salam, North Darfur.

With a looming rainy season, a cholera outbreak and food insecurity, the situation in Darfur is “getting worse every day and that’s what war is,” said Taher.