Syrian Regime Officials Convicted of Crimes Against Humanity: Torture, Disappearances, and Deaths Confirmed:
The Paris Criminal Court issued an in absentia ruling on May 24, 2024, convicting three senior security officials from the Syrian regime for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, based on proven practices of enforced disappearance and torture. The convicted officials are: Ali Mamlouk, former Director of National Security; Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence; and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, head of the Investigation Branch of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence at the Mezzeh Military Airport. This trial is the first of its kind in France and the first to target officials of this level in the Syrian regime. It is part of a series of cases led by Syrian victims’ associations in cooperation with Syrian and international human rights organizations in several European countries. The court found that the three officials played a key role, given their positions in the military hierarchy, in the enforced disappearance of Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, sentencing them to life imprisonment and extending the validity of international arrest warrants issued against them.
The Tragedy of the “Dabbagh Family”
On November 13, 2013, just before midnight, Syrian-French student Patrick Abdelkader Dabbagh was arrested at his family home in Damascus by members of the Air Force Intelligence. His house was searched, and several phones, computers, and a sum of money were confiscated. The following day, members of the same unit returned and arrested his father, Mazen Dabbagh, a Syrian-French citizen and advisor at the French School in Damascus, and confiscated the family’s car. Mazen’s son-in-law, Wissam Nasser, was also detained. All were transferred to the Mezzeh Airport prison, identified by the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry as one of the detention centers with the highest mortality rates. Nasser was released after two days, making him a key witness in the case.
Nasser’s testimony, according to the ruling, describes the three of them standing for 14 hours in a narrow prison corridor with their heads bowed and hands cuffed behind their backs. They found Patrick, who had been detained the day before, with visible signs of torture on his neck and body. Nasser told the court that before his release, he heard Mazen screaming from his cell, “I’m suffocating, I’m suffocating, get me out of here.”
After the arrest of Patrick and Mazen, their whereabouts remained unknown until months later, when someone contacted the family asking for $15,000 to know their fate and transfer them to a civilian prison. Mazen’s wife paid the amount but was asked for another similar sum in exchange for death certificates for her son and husband. In July 2018, the Syrian authorities issued death certificates for them, stating that Patrick died in January 2014 and Mazen in November 2017, without specifying the place or cause of death, and the family was not given their bodies. The family’s ordeal didn’t end there; the regime seized all of Mazen’s property, including the family’s home, and the family was forcibly evicted. In 2021, the Syrian land registry declared that the Syrian government owned Mazen’s property, and the house was leased to the Air Force Intelligence, the very agency that arrested Mazen and his son.
Universal Jurisdiction Over Crimes Against Humanity
Despite the atrocities committed in Syria since 2011, including the enormous number of missing and forcibly disappeared individuals, and the practices of torture and murder, victims and their families faced limited avenues for justice due to the lack of accountability mechanisms both nationally and internationally. Syria has not ratified the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute crimes against humanity, hindering access to this court. Efforts by victim groups to refer the Syrian case to the ICC through the UN Security Council have been repeatedly blocked by Russian and Chinese vetoes.
As a result, victims’ associations sought to prosecute Syrian regime officials in European national courts, relying on either the victims’ European citizenship or the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes of torture, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The case of Patrick and Mazen Dabbagh became a model for such litigation due to the gravity of the crime and their French nationality.
On this basis, in October 2016, Ubai Dabbagh, brother and uncle of the victims, filed a complaint in French courts, along with several human rights organizations, regarding the detention and enforced disappearance of Mazen and Patrick Dabbagh. Subsequently, the French War Crimes Unit (established in 2012 to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity and international war crimes) launched its investigation in 2018. In March 2023, the three officers were charged with complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, and for their role in the deaths of Patrick and Mazen Dabbagh under torture, leading to the case being referred to the Paris Criminal Court, which issued the current in absentia ruling. The ruling followed four days of testimony from experts, lawyers, civil parties, the Dabbagh family, and 23 witnesses, including defectors from the Syrian army and former detainees who survived the detention center where Mazen and Patrick were held or who had personally encountered one of the accused officials.
Trial of the “Comprehensive Crime”
Although the absence of the defendants and the difficulty in enforcing the verdict prevent the ruling from being seen as a full realization of justice or reparation for the victims, the significance of this trial lies in its scope. The court went beyond the specific case to address the practices of the Syrian regime since 2011. It sought to compensate for the lack of direct evidence regarding how Patrick and Mazen were treated before their deaths by examining evidence related to the treatment of others in similar circumstances in comparable detention centers. The court, therefore, extended the scope of the trial beyond the crime committed by three officers against two individuals to reflect a broader indictment of the systemic repression practiced by the Syrian regime.
The court concluded that the torture in Syrian detention centers, verified through survivor testimonies, amounted to institutionalized violence that frequently led to physical and psychological harm, often resulting in death.
Source: Leen Ayoub. The Legal Agenda.
Read more: Syrian Regime Officials Convicted of Crimes Against Humanity: Torture, Disappearances, and Deaths Confirmed
Ibraheem Jabr is a seasoned legal professional with extensive expertise in international law, human rights, and commercial legal support. Based in Eindhoven, Netherlands,Ibraheem is the Founder and Legal Counsel at Legal Bridge, where they provide expert legal advice to EU-based government agencies and law firms navigating the complex legal landscape of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.