A French court issued arrest warrants for Syria’s former president, Bashar al-Assad, alongside six other top former Syrian officials, over the assassination of two journalists during the bombardments of a rebel-held city in 2012, French media reports said Tuesday.
Marie Colvin, 56, an American working for The Sunday Times of Britain, and French photographer Rémi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012, by an explosion in the eastern city of Homs.
The attack targeted a press center where British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier, and Syrian translator Wael Omar, who were injured, were also working.
"The issuing of the seven arrest warrants is a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime," Clémence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and for Ochlik's parents, told Le Monde.
"The investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press center was part of the Syrian regime's explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country," added Mazen Darwish, lawyer and director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
Other than Assad, the warrants target his brother Maher al-Assad, former Syria’s intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub.
Assad’s war crimes and use of chemical weapons
France's highest court had already ruled in July that an arrest warrant for al-Assad was invalid because it was issued while he was still in office, but stated that a new warrant can now be issued as he is no longer a sitting head of state.
French investigating magistrates issued the warrant in November 2023 following a French investigation into chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian city of Douma and the Eastern Ghouta district in August 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people.
Then-President Assad's government denied using chemical weapons during the country's civil war that began in 2011. Assad was toppled last December by Islamist rebels whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is now the interim president.
Reuters contributed to this report.