A French court has issued arrest warrants for seven former top Syrian officials, including ex-President Bashar al-Assad, for the bombing of a press centre in Homs, a judicial source and a human rights organisation said.
A rocket hit the “informal press centre” on February 22, 2012, killing renowned US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and injuring two other journalists and an interpreter.
Besides al-Assad, who fled to Russia in December 2024 when opposition fighters seized control of Syria, warrants have also been issued against his brother Maher al-Assad, who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armoured division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub, among others.
France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts.
The Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression said that the French judicial investigation had found that the attack had deliberately targeted foreign journalists.
“The judicial investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre in Bab Amr was part of the Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country,” said Mazen Darwish, a lawyer and the general director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, in a statement.
Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also noted that the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing”.
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