French court orders life imprisonment for 3 senior Syrian officers
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – A Paris court ordered on Friday life imprisonment terms for three senior officers of the Syrian government for committing crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to disappearance and death.
The three officers were accused of complicity in arresting and then torturing to death a father and his son from the Dabbagh family.
The officers are Ali Mamlouk, 78, head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, Jamil Hassan, 72, head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019 and a member of Assad’s entourage, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, in his early 60s, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh prison.
Though the three were all absent, there are international warrants for their arrest.
This is the first time that France has held a trial on abuses committed during Syria’s conflict since 2011, the AFP reported.
In November 2013, Air Force intelligence of the Syrian government arrested Mazzen Dabbagh and his son, Patrick, Franco-Syrian nationals, and detained them at Mezzeh prison in Damascus.
Mazzen was a counselor at the French Lycée in Damascus, and his son was an arts and humanities student. The father was accused of failing to raise his son correctly.
In July 2018, the Dabbagh family received a formal notification that their family members had died. The document said that Patrick died on 21 Jan. 21, 2014, and his father on Nov. 25, 2017, without revealing the detention center where they were held and the death circumstances.
The family filed a complaint in 2016 against the aforementioned officials supported by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).
Ahead of the trial, the investigating judges said it was “sufficiently established” that the two men “like thousands of detainees of the Air Force intelligence suffered torture of such intensity that they died.”