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.
