It was reported that the French judiciary has issued an arrest warrant for Bashar Assad, the ousted leader of the Baath regime in Syria.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement on his X account, “The French judiciary has issued an arrest warrant for Bashar Assad. The crimes of the regime, the horrors of which I witnessed in Sednaya Prison, must not go unpunished. France is and will continue to be mobilized to ensure justice is served for Syrians.” According to a statement made to AA by the French National Counterterrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), Pnat requested an arrest warrant for Assad on January 16 as part of an investigation opened into the death of a French citizen of Syrian origin who lost his life in Syria in 2017. According to a statement made by French judicial sources, the judges responsible for the investigation issued an arrest warrant for Assad on January 20 on the grounds that he was an accessory to war crimes due to murder and deliberate attacks on civilians. Barrot and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had inspected the Sednaya Prison, a torture base in the capital Damascus, on January 3 following the overthrow of the Baath regime in Syria. A court in France issued an arrest warrant for Assad on November 15, 2023, on the grounds that he was an accessory to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court had charged Assad with crimes against humanity and accessory to war crimes in the chemical attacks in the Eastern Ghouta region of Syria in 2013.
