FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
A French court has issued international arrest warrants for seven former senior Syrian regime officials, including former President Bashar al-Assad, in connection with the bombing of an informal center for journalists in the city of Homs in 2012, which killed two prominent international journalists.
According to a judicial source and the human rights organization Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, the decision was made within the framework of investigations into crimes against humanity, which are allowed to be prosecuted by French courts, regardless of the location of the perpetrators or victims.
The attack occurred on February 22, 2012, when a rocket hit a building in the Bab Amr neighborhood of Homs, used as an informal center for journalists. The attack killed prominent American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik. Two other journalists and a translator were seriously injured.
In addition to Bashar al-Assad, who according to international sources fled to Russia in December 2024 after the fall of Damascus to the opposition, the arrest warrant also includes his brother Maher al-Assad, then de facto leader of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian army, former intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and former army chief of staff Ali Ayoub, among others.
According to a statement by Syrian lawyer and activist Mazen Darwish, director of the Center for Media and Freedom of Expression in Syria, the French investigation has confirmed that the attack on the journalists was intentional.
"The judicial investigation has clearly determined that the bombing of the media center in Bab Amr was part of a deliberate strategy by the Syrian regime to target foreign journalists, with the aim of stopping media coverage of the regime's crimes and forcing them to leave the city and the country," Darwish stated.
This historic decision reopens the debate on international responsibility for crimes committed by the Syrian regime during the civil war, and highlights the increasingly active role of the European judiciary in prosecuting crimes against humanity, in the absence of a functioning justice system within Syria.
Lini një Përgjigje