[La France pourrait devenir le refuge en Europe des criminels de guerre syriens. Saisie sur le cas d’Abdulhamid C., membre des services secrets de Damas interpellé en région parisienne et mis en examen en février 2019 pour « complicité de crimes contre l’humanité », la chambre criminelle de la Cour de cassation a estimé, le 24 novembre, que les tribunaux français sont incompétents au motif que le droit syrien ne sanctionne pas spécifiquement les crimes contre l’humanité. Cet arrêt interprète de façon étroite et restrictive la loi du 9 août 2010 qui transpose le statut de Rome fondant la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) et la notion de compétence universelle dans la législation française. La France est l’un des seuls pays européens à imposer ce verrou de la « double incrimination ».]
Tribune. The atrocities committed in Syria since March 2011 are not only a human tragedy causing untold suffering for the Syrian people. They deeply shock the conscience of humanity as a whole and undermine its universal values.
A decision rendered by the Court of Cassation on November 24 will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for French courts to prosecute some of the fundamental crimes committed in Syria and block access to justice for survivors and families of victims of these crimes. crimes.
The Syrian government has the primary responsibility to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide committed on its territory, and to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes, whatever their affiliations, are brought to justice. He is not going down this road.
For its part, since the use of the Russian and Chinese vetoes in 2014 blocking the referral of the Syrian situation to the ICC, the Security Council is still at an impasse.
Many surveys
To date, predominantly European jurisdictions, including in France, are the only tangible hopes for justice for the survivors and the families of victims of these crimes.
They get results. Thus, at the beginning of 2021, the German court in Koblenz recognized a former Syrian intelligence official, guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity for having arrested demonstrators who were then detained, tortured and for some killed in one of the many branches of the Syrian intelligence services.
This is the first judgment qualifying the actions of the Syrian regime as“Systematic attack against its civilian population with a view to eliminating peaceful demonstrations and intimidating the population in order to prevent future demonstrations”.
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