Secretary of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), Haytham Rahmeh, welcomed a French court’s sentencing of three senior officials in the Assad regime to life imprisonment after they were found guilty of committing crimes against humanity since the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011.
In statements made on Saturday, Rahmeh said, “The head of crime in Syria is the head of the regime. These sentences for a group of criminals must include the criminal Bashar al-Assad and all his aides, in international courts and with collective efforts, especially with the presence of conclusive evidence of the commission of war crimes.”
He added, “We encourage countries around the world to take similar steps and resort to the International Criminal Court in order to seek accountability, starting from the head of the regime to all those involved in crimes against Syrians.”
Rahmeh stressed that the victims and their families are still waiting for international justice to be served and view positively any method of pressure on the Assad regime that would contribute to undermining its ability to commit more brutal crimes. He added that daily reports indicate the continuation of violations by the Assad regime and its defiance of sanctions issued against it, which increases the responsibility of the international community to find more effective mechanisms to stop these violations.
On Friday, a court in the French capital ordered life sentences for three senior Syrian regime officials in a landmark case. After a four-day trial, the Paris Criminal Court found Ali Mamlouk, former director of Syria’s National Security Bureau; Jamil Hassan, former head of the air force intelligence directorate; and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former head of the air force intelligence’s branch in Damascus, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.
The case was based on their roles in the deaths of two French nationals of Syrian origin. Mazzen Dabbagh and his son, Patrick, were detained in Damascus in 2013. The two were declared dead in 2018. The family was formally notified that Patrick had died in 2014 and that Mazzen had died in 2017.
(Source: SOC’s Media Department)
