2023-05-12 18:18:29
This is a historic victory for supporters of the universal jurisdiction of French justice. The Court of Cassation confirmed, Friday, May 12, the possibility of prosecuting foreign perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed outside France against foreign nationals. “The Court recognizes that French justice has this “universal jurisdiction” in two cases concerning Syria”said in a press release the highest judicial court, which issued two judgments specifying the conditions under which French justice was competent.
The Court of Cassation had been seized of appeals from two Syrians, who requested the cancellation of the proceedings against them: one filed by Abdulhamid Chaban, a former soldier arrested in France and indicted for “complicity in crimes against the humanity” in February 2019, and the other by Majdi Nema, former spokesperson for the Syrian rebel group Jaych Al-Islam (Army of Islam), prosecuted for “torture” and “war crimes”. Jaych Al-Islam is suspected of abducting, detaining and torturing human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, co-founder of the local Syrian revolution coordination committees Wael Hamada, and their colleagues Samira Al-Khalil and Nazem Al-Hammadi.
In November 2021, the Court of Cassation, already seized of the Chaban case by its lawyers, had considered that French justice was incompetent in this case, invoking the principle of « double incrimination » provided for in the law of August 9, 2010, which enshrines universal jurisdiction in French law: crimes against humanity and war crimes must be recognized in the country of origin of a suspect whom France intends to prosecute. However, Syria does not recognize these crimes and has not ratified the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court. Long met by The worldAbdulhamid Chaban formally denies having participated in crimes against humanity.
This judgment had caused an earthquake in the legal world and human rights organizations. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a civil party, had lodged an opposition for a procedural reason, allowing the case to be returned to the Court of Cassation.
Definitively settle the question
In the case of Majdi Nema, arrested in January 2020 in Marseilles where he was studying, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld his indictment in April 2022, considering that Syrian law provided “by equivalence” several war crimes and offenses defined in the French penal code. It was a so-called “rebellion” judgment, contradicting the interpretation of the Court of Cassation in the Chaban case.
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