International Justice Mira Bashar al-Assad

New French warrant accuses Bashar al-Assad of complicity in war crimes and reopens Syrian civil war wounds that has devastated thousands of lives in more than a decade

Judges in France issued a new arrest warrant against Syria’s deposed leader, Bashar al-Assad, for alleged complicity in war crimes related to a barrel bombs against civilians in 2017, who killed a frank man, according to Reports.

A legal source with knowledge of the case told French media outlets that the Special Unit of the Paris Court for Humanity Crimes and War Crimes issued the warrant this week as part of an investigation into the death of Salah Abou Nabout, which was Dead when his house was hit during a bombing in the city of Daraa, southern Syria, on June 7, 2017.

Al-Assad, deposed last month for a lightning rebel offensive and now exiled in Russia, is responsible for the attack on the warrant as “commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces,” the source said.

French judges began investigating Nabout’s death in 2018 and that year issued arrest warrants against six high Syrian army officials who suspected of following Al-Assad’s orders and being accomplices in bombing war crimes.

Omar Abou Nabout, the victim’s son, said he hoped that “a trial will occur and that the perpetrators will be arrested and tried, wherever they are.”

“This case represents the apex of a long struggle for justice, in which my family and I believe from the beginning,” he said in a statement.

This is the second arrest warrant issued against Al-Assad by French judges, who had already issued a warrant against the president deposed in November 2023 for chemical attacks that killed more than 1,000 civilians in the city of Douma and the Ghouta Oriental region in 2013.

Al-Assad’s regime repeatedly denied the use of chemical weapons and barrel pumps, insisting that it did not perform indiscriminate attacks against civilians during the civil war of almost 14 years.

Last week, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, traveled Damascus to meet with Syria’s factual leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

Khan, who was invited to Syria by the transitional government, said the court wanted to support the Syrian authorities in their efforts “to accountable for alleged crimes committed in the country.”

In recent years, there have been several legal efforts in European countries-including France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands-to process Syrian state officials and anti-government militants on suspicion of war crimes and humanity crimes.

With information from Euronews*