French court gives life sentence to 3 Syrian officials for war crimes
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – French court sentenced on Friday three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for their involvement in war crimes in a first of its kind case in Europe against the Syrian government.
Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud were found guilty for complicity in the arrest, torture, and killing of Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick in 2013 in Damascus.
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.
The court’s verdict was the “first recognition in France of the crimes against humanity of the Syrian regime,” said Clémence Bectarte, the Dabbagh family lawyer from the International Federation for Human Rights.
“It is a message of hope for all Syrian victims who are waiting for justice. It is a message that must be addressed to states so that they do not normalize their relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” she said.
International arrest warrants have been issued since 2018 for Mamlouk, head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, Hassan, head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019, and Mahmoud, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh prison. However, they have not been apprehended.
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.”