Paris court orders life terms for 3 Syrians in landmark war crimes case

A Paris court on Friday ordered life prison sentences for three top Syrian security officials for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in a landmark case.

It is the first time that France has held a trial on abuses committed during Syria's civil war since 2011.

The accused – Ali Mamlouk, former head of the National Security Bureau; Jamil Hassan, former director of the Air Force intelligence service; and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, former head of investigations – were all absent, but there are international warrants for their arrest.

Many in the court galleries rose to applaud after the ruling was announced.

"It is a verdict that will resonate for hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are still waiting for justice," said Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for some of the victims in the case.

The three officials are believed to be in Syria. Mamlouk has become a top adviser to the Syrian regime's President Bashar Al-Assad.

They were accused over their role in the deaths of two French-Syrian men, Mazzen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, who were arrested in Damascus in 2013 and never seen again. They were declared dead in 2018.

At the time of his arrest, Patrick Dabbagh was a 20-year-old arts and humanities student at the University of Damascus. His father was a senior education adviser at the French school in Damascus.

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".

Prosecutors noted during the trial that there had been systematic and widespread abuses in Syria since 2011, saying tens of thousands of Syrians may have suffered the fate of the Dabbaghs.

'First step'

Several experts and witnesses who have spent time in Syrian prisons gave evidence at the trial.

"Impunity is something very difficult to live with," said Obeida Dabbagh, Mazzen Dabbagh's brother.

"Justice has to be seen. This is a very important first step, it is historic."

Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the trial and the sentence were a "signal to our leaders, to European leaders, that they must not at any price normalise relations with Bashar Al-Assad".

Syria's war since 2011 has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged Syria's economy and infrastructure.

Trials into abuses in Syria have taken place elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany. In those cases, the people prosecuted held lower ranks and were present at the hearings.