Paris : France has launched a probe into Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for alleged crimes against humanity, a judicial source said after world powers sparred at the United Nations over the embattled leader’s fate.
Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary inquiry on September 15 into alleged crimes committed by the Syrian government between 2011 and 2013, the source told AFP. The French investigation is largely based on evidence from a former Syrian army photographer known by the codename “Caesar,” who defected and fled the country in 2013, bringing with him some 55,000 graphic photographs.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France had a “responsibility” to take action. “Faced with these crimes that offend the human conscience, this bureaucracy of horror, faced with this denial of the values of humanity, it is our responsibility to act against the impunity of the assassins,” Fabius said in a statement sent to AFP. While Assad is unlikely to ever take the stand in a French court, the inquiry could add to political pressure on the Syrian leader in the midst of a diplomatic row between the West and Russia and Iran over his fate.
