INTERNACIONAL
French court sentences 3 Syrian officials to life in prison in absentia for war crimes
A Paris court sentenced three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison Friday for complicity in war crimes in a landmark case against the regime of Syria’s President Bashar Assad and the first such case in Europe.
The trial focused on the officials’ role in the alleged arrest, torture and killing in 2013 in Damascus of Mazen Dabbagh, a Franco-Syrian father, and his son Patrick. The four-day trial featured harrowing testimonies from survivors and searing accounts from Mazen’s brother.
FRANCE IS TRYING SYRIAN EX-OFFICIALS FOR THE TORTURE AND KILLING OF A FATHER AND SON. HERE’S WHY
Though the verdict was cathartic for plaintiffs, France and Syria do not have an extradition treaty, making the outcome largely symbolic. International arrest warrants for the three former Syrian intelligence officials — Ali Mamlouk, Jamil Hassan, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud — have been issued since 2018 to no avail.
They are the most senior Syrian officials to go on trial in a European court over crimes allegedly committed during the country’s civil war.
The court proceedings came as Assad has started to shed his longtime status as a pariah that stemmed from the violence unleashed on his opponents. Human rights groups involved in the case hoped it would refocus attention on alleged atrocities.
Clémence Bectarte, the Dabbagh family lawyer from the International Federation for Human Rights, said the verdict was the «first recognition in France of the crimes against humanity of the Syrian regime.»
Activists hold Syrian flags next to portraits of alleged victims of the Syrian regime, during a demonstration Tuesday, May 21, 2024, at a courtroom in Paris. A Paris court will this week seek to determine whether Syrian intelligence officials — the most senior to go on trial in a European court over crimes allegedly committed during the country’s civil war — were responsible for the 2013 disappearance and deaths of Patrick and Mazen Dabbagh. The four-day hearings, starting Tuesday, are expected to air chilling allegations that President Bashar Assad’s government has widely used torture and arbitrary detentions to hold on to power during the conflict, now in its 14th year. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
«It is a message of hope for all Syrian victims who are waiting for justice. It is a message that must be addressed to states so that they do not normalize their relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad,» she said.
The trial began Tuesday over the alleged torture and killing of the French-Syrian father and son who were arrested at the height of Arab Spring-inspired anti-government protests. The two were arrested in Damascus following a crackdown on demonstrations that later turned into a brutal civil war, now in its 14th year.
The probe into their disappearance started in 2015 when Obeida Dabbagh, Mazen’s brother, testified to investigators already examining war crimes in Syria.
Obeida Dabbagh and his wife, Hanane, are parties to the trial along with non-governmental organizations. They testified in court on Thursday, the third day of the trial.
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Obeida Dabbagh said he hoped the trial would set a precedent for holding Assad accountable. «Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died. Even today, some live in fear and terror,» he said.
Despite the defendants’ absence, the trial’s significance was underscored by Brigitte Herremans, a senior researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. «It’s very important that perpetrators from the regime side are held accountable, even if it’s mainly symbolic. It means a lot for the fight against impunity,» she said.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has once again called on the U.S. to place nuclear weapons within its borders in a show of deterrence to Russia’s continued aggression just over the border in Ukraine.
A similar request was apparently made to the Biden administration in 2022, which was never agreed to, but Duda has not given up on the idea. This time he addressed his appeal to the Trump administration during an interview with the Financial Times that was published Thursday.
«Russia did not even hesitate when they were relocating their nuclear weapons into Belarus,» Duda told the Financial Times in reference to actions Russia took beginning in 2023, a year after it invaded Ukraine. «They didn’t ask anyone’s permission.»
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about where President Donald Trump stands when it comes to this form of deterrence.
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President Andrzej Duda speaks during the Polish parliament meeting in Warsaw on March 7, 2025. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The Trump administration this week took steps to try and bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, which has been raging for more than three years following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
While Ukraine has agreed to the U.S.’s initial 30-day ceasefire contingent on Russia’s acceptance of the terms, Moscow has not, and it is unlikely that the Trump administration would take steps to jeopardize those negotiations by agreeing to put U.S. nukes in Poland – which shares a border with Russia and could be viewed as a threat by the Kremlin.
But Duda’s advisor on international affairs, Wojciech Kolarski, echoed the Polish president’s plea and, in a Thursday interview with Poland’s RMF FM radio, argued that as a NATO member who shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, the steps were important for Warsaw’s security.
Aerial view taken on Nov. 17, 2022 shows the site where a missile strike killed two men in the eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with war-ravaged Ukraine on Nov. 15, 2022. (Wojtek Radwanski, Damien Simonart/AFP via Getty Images)
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But should the U.S. again refuse Poland’s request, there is another nuclear-armed nation in the NATO alliance that may be willing to assist in «nuclear sharing.»
Amid mounting concern in the European Union that the U.S. could withdraw forces from the bloc or become an unreliable defense partner in countering Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron opened discussions on a strategy that could help extend its nuclear deterrence to other EU nations.
French President Emmanuel Macron meets with President Donald Trump. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
While the specifics of that strategy remain unclear, including whether France has proposed actually dispersing nuclear arms to other nations, Poland has reportedly been in talks with France about the issue.
Russia has already called France’s strategy to re-evaluate its extension of nuclear deterrence «extremely confrontational.»
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Despite Moscow’s objections, France’s defense concept is far from new as the U.S. deterrence umbrella during the Cold War was intended to ensure NATO allies would be protected under America’s nuclear power in case of a direct threat by another nuclear-armed nation, like Russia, China or North Korea.
While France is the EU’s only nuclear power, it has the third-largest nuclear stockpile when it comes to nuclear-armed nations in NATO, which also includes the U.S. and the U.K.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Complicación
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