Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and two other high-ranking officials in Syria had arrest warrants issued in their names from the French Judiciary in connection with their roles in the 2013 chemical weapons attacks in eastern Ghouta and Douma that claimed over 1,400 lives.

Two years after the start of a civil war that has claimed more than half a million lives and uprooted half of the prewar population of Syria, the opposition in that nation has accused the government of being behind the attacks that left over 1,400 people dead.

Why the warrants?

Since the Syrian revolution in 2011, the president of Syria has been accused of leading a regime that has committed multiple war crimes against its own people. The French magistrate’s ruling was the first time that an arrest warrant had been issued for him.

Two additional arrest warrants were filed for General Bassam al-Hassan, a presidential advisor who works with the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), and General Ghassan Abbas, the head of an SSRC section that manufactures chemical weapons.

The “chemical attacks carried out in August 2013, in particular on August 5 and August 21″ in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta were thought to have involved these four superiors.

French Claims against Assad

France claims its global jurisdiction over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
“This is the first time a sitting head of state has been the subject of an arrest warrant in another country for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” stated Steve Kostas, senior managing lawyer at OSJI.

Currently, the International Criminal Court has two arrest warrants out for heads of state: one for Omar Al Bashir, the former president of Sudan, and another for Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. Warrants were also issued by French magistrates for Syria’s main security and liaison officer, Bassam Al Hassan, and director of the organization that developed the country’s chemical weapons program, Ghassam Abbas.

“The arrest warrants that the French judiciary issued for President Bashar al-Assad and his cronies set a precedent that has never been seen before. The founder and director general of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), attorney Mazen Darwish, stated that “it is a new victory for the victims, their families, and the survivors and a step on the path to justice and sustainable peace in Syria.”

Seven further prominent Syrian government officials have seven separate arrest orders issued for them in France alone. The arrest orders are void in Syria, but they might be carried out if any of the four officials go to France.

According to SNHR, 230,224 Syrian citizens died since the start of the revolution in 2011, with the Syrian regime accountable for more than 200,000 of those casualties. Establishing that conflicts in the nation were at a “four-year peak,” the UN Independent Commission on Syria called for a nationwide ceasefire in October 2023.

Crimes Against Humanity

The following year, the UN Syria committee came to the conclusion that the weapons originated from the “stockpile of the Syrian military” and that “significant quantities of Sarin gas were used in a well-planned indiscriminate attack.” Between 2012 and 2023, the Syrian regime was responsible for 98 per cent of the 222 chemical weapons attacks that the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported.

The extraterritorial jurisdiction principle, which enables courts to try international war crimes even if they were committed on foreign soil, is the basis for the arrest warrants that were issued on Wednesday. Multiple high-ranking Syrian government officials, including intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, have been charged with crimes against humanity under the doctrine of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

What happened 10 years ago?

Ten years had passed since the incident in Syria, where government forces loyal to President Bashir Assad’s administration were engaged in combat with opposition groups.

The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) came to the conclusion in a thorough report that “the evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in possession off, and used by, the Syrian government armed forces.”

The HRW study further said that the “140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack or their associated launchers” were not in the possession of Syrian opposition forces.

In one of the earliest reports on the incident by the Syrian news agency SANA, Assad refuted all accusations, stating that “it would go against elementary logic.” Assad, however, attributed the fault to the rebel forces.

“Everything that has been said is absurd, primitive, illogical, and fabricated,” even went so far as to be expressed by Omran al-Zoubi, the then-Minister of Information, according to SANA.

The Ghouta chemical attack occurred in the early hours of August 21, 2013, in Ghouta, Syria, during the Syrian civil war. It was carried out by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Two opposition-controlled neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs were targeted by sarin-containing missiles. The number of fatalities has been estimated to be between 281 and 1,729 individuals. Since the Iran–Iraq War, this strike marked the deadliest application of chemical weapons.

The funeral shrouds ran out, so the deceased were covered in nylon bags. Some houses remained unchecked six days after the attack, with the bodies of their occupants still inside.