France has issued an international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for complicity in crimes against humanity over chemical attacks carried out in the summer of 2013.
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A judicial source cited by the French news agency AFP said that warrants were also issued against Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad, the de-facto chief of a Syrian elite military unit, along with two armed forces generals.
US intelligence showed that sarin gas attacks in Eastern Ghouta killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians including women and children, on 21 August, 2013.
A nerve gas, Sarin is considered a weapon of mass destruction that is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention.
War crimes charge
The judicial source said Assad was also suspected of complicity in war crimes for bombings near the capital, Damascus, that killed more than 1,400 people in the same month.
The region was at the time under the control of the opposition Free Syrian Army.
France, which claims worldwide jurisdiction for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been investigating the chemical attacks since 2021.
The probe comes on the back of legal complaints filed by the Franco-Syrian NGO Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, the lawyers association Open Society Justice Initiative, and the Syrian Archive, a body documenting human rights violations in Syria.
Ten years after the 2013 attacks, the French government says Syria has yet to provide complete information regarding the state of its chemical weapons stocks – which it says “remain a threat to the Syrian people and to regional and international security”.
