France issued an international arrest warrant for the President of Syria, Assad: what he is accused of

A court in France has issued an arrest warrant for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and three of his top officials. The so-called president of Syria and his henchmen are accused of committing crimes against humanity due to the chemical attacks carried out by the Assad regime in August 2013 in Eastern Ghouta.

The use of chemical weapons in this region resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people, the vast majority of whom were civilians. The details, citing sources in the judiciary, were reported by France Info radio.

According to the publication, the arrest warrant for Assad was issued by the French justice system on November 14. In addition to the Syrian dictator himself, three of his henchmen, who head the security forces in Syria, are subject to detention. These are two generals of the Syrian armed forces, as well as Bashar al-Assad's brother Maher, who de facto heads the Syrian elite military unit.

All four are charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes for the use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta in August 2013.

On August 21, 2013, the Assad regime used chemical weapons in a region controlled by the Syrian opposition. According to U.S. intelligence, this resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people, the vast majority of whom were civilians. Shocking footage of the painful deaths of men, women, and children poisoned by sarin nerve gas, a weapon of mass destruction, has spread around the world. The use of such weapons is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria joined in October 2013.

However, according to the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, in the ten years since then, the Assad regime has not provided full information on the status of its chemical weapons stockpiles, and "the repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime since 2013 shows that its stockpiles have not been destroyed and that they continue to threaten the Syrian people, as well as regional and international security."

The ministry also added that "independent investigations by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have found that the Syrian regime has been responsible for at least nine chemical weapons attacks since its accession," i.e., over the past ten years.

In March 2021, a complaint about war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Assad regime was filed by the French-Syrian non-governmental organization Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.

As a reminder, in March of this year, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi imposed sanctions against Syrian President Assad and the Iranian military command. In particular, the annex to the presidential decree states that sanctions against the Syrian dictator are imposed for a period of 10 years. The document blocks Assad's assets and temporarily deprives him of the right to use and dispose of them. In particular, it concerns assets in respect of which Assad may directly or indirectly perform actions identical in content to the exercise of the right to dispose of them.

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