PARIS: FIDH and LDH, along with Obeida Dabbagh, referred the case of the forced disappearance of the latter’s brother and nephew, Patrick and Mazzen Dabbagh, two Franco-Syrian nationals, to the office of the Prosecutor of the Paris Court’s specialized unit for the prosecution of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Patrick and Mazzen Dabbagh were arrested in November 2013 by the Syrian Air Forces intelligence service, and were never seen again.
In the document filed with the prosecutor, the organizations, together with Obeida, are requesting an immediate judicial investigation into the “crimes of forced disappearance and torture, constituents of crimes against humanity.”
We are hoping that the prosecutor’s office “will file a request to open a judicial investigation as soon as possible into these extremely grave events which reflect the widespread repression that has been inflicted on the people of Syria since 2011,” said the organizations.
“Since we cannot refer crimes perpetrated in Syria to the International Criminal Court, it is time for the justice systems of third countries to begin investigating the crimes committed by the Bashar Assad’s regime.”
The organizations reminded the French Foreign Ministry that in September 2015, it had transferred the Caesar Report to the Public Prosecutor of the Paris Court’s specialized unit, which had started a preliminary investigation. “Now the unit is too desperately short of resources to move this case forward, as with other cases that have been referred to it,” they said.
It is urgent that the French authorities, as some of their European counterparts have done, provide sufficient funding to the unit to conduct its investigations adequately, said the organizations. “This is the only way it will be ascertained how serious the French authorities are about dealing with the impunity of the crimes committed in Syria.”
Some of the courts and units specialized in international crimes, particularly in Sweden, Germany, UK, and Austria, have already been addressing the crimes committed in Syria. But the investigations and prosecutions do not address the crimes attributable to the Assad regime.
Patrick, a 20-year old student at the Damascus University, was arrested at midnight on Nov. 3, 2013 from his home by five persons who said that they belonged to the Syrian air force intelligence services and wanted to take him in for questioning, but did not give any reason or grounds for his arrest.
The next day, they, accompanied by a dozen armed soldiers, returned at midnight to accuse Mazzen, Patrick’s father of not having raised his son well, and then arrested him in order to teach him how to educate his son.
The two, who never took part in any protest against Assad, have been untraceable since then.