The Court of Cassation estimated this Friday, July 25 that no exception could raise the personal immunity of a head of state in practice, thus canceling the arrest warrant issued by Parisian investigating judges against former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for fatal chemical attacks in 2013.
The arrest warrant was issued in November 2023, while Bashar al-Assad “remained a head of state in practice” and, therefore, was not “regular,” said the president of the Court of Cassation, Christophe Dream, during a public hearing transmitted in an unprecedented manner on the Internet. The highest court of the French court order “, therefore, cancels” the arrest warrant.
“However”, since Bashar Al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and is no longer president, “new arrest orders against him have been issued or can be issued for him for facts that probably constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Christophe Soulard developed. Therefore, the open judicial information against him can continue, he added.
This decision was anxiously expected in France and abroad, particularly by human rights organizations involved in the fight against the impunity of suspected state chiefs of international crimes in their population.
Exception to functional immunity
The Court did not follow the position of Attorney General Rémy Heitz, who had proposed during the hearing on July 4 to maintain the arrest warrant against Bashar al-Assad, dismissing the personal immunity from which he benefited because France no longer considered it since 2012 as the “legitimate head of state in the exercise” that take into account “mass crimes committed by Sinriano power.”
On the other hand, the Court of Cassation first recognized an exception to the functional immunity that foreign states agents benefit whether they are prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Therefore, the accusation of complicity of a former governor of the Syrian Central Bank (2005-2016) and former Minister of the Economy (2016-2017), Adib Mayaleh.
Two Parisian investigation judges had issued, in November 2023, an arrest warrant against the complicity of crimes against humanity and war crimes against Bashar al-Assad for chemical attacks attributed to Syrian power in 2013, having left more than a thousand dead.
This arrest warrant was disputed by the National Office of the Anti -Fiscal Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT), backed by the Office of the Attorney General of the Appeals of Paris, in the name of the absolute immunity enjoyed by the heads of State in practice before the courts of foreign countries. But the Court of Appeal had validated this mandate in June 2024, believing that these crimes “cannot be considered as part of the official functions of a head of state.”
Source: BFM TV
