GENEVA: Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court is considering dropping a case charging an uncle of deposed Syrian president Bashar Assad with alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Rifaat Assad is accused by Swiss prosecutors of a long list of crimes, including having ordered “murders, acts of torture, inhumane treatment and illegal detentions” while an officer in the Syrian army.
His part in the notorious February 1982 massacre in the western town of Hama, which left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead, earned him the nickname of “the Butcher of Hama.”
The date of the former vice president’s trial has not been announced.
On November 29, just a few days before his nephew’s overthrow by militants, the Federal Criminal Court informed the victim plaintiffs that “it wished to close the proceedings” into Rifaat Assad, according to the Swiss Sunday newspapers Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung.
The tribunal said that the defendant in his 80s was suffering from ailments preventing him from traveling and taking part in his trial, the papers reported.
The federal public prosecutor’s office opened the criminal proceedings in December 2013 following a report by the Swiss non-governmental organization Trial International.
Alerted by Syrians living in Geneva, the rights group traced Assad to a major Geneva hotel.
“Trial confirms the intention expressed by the court to the parties to close the case. But the formal decision has not yet been taken,” Benoit Meystre, the NGO’s legal adviser, told AFP on Sunday.
“If the case is closed, the possibility of an appeal will be examined, and it is highly likely that this decision will be contested,” Meystre said, adding that any appeal would have to be brought by the plaintiffs and not the NGO.
Swiss prosecutors opened the proceedings on the grounds of universal jurisdiction in crimes against humanity and war crimes cases.
Assad went into exile in 1984 after a failed attempt to overthrow his brother, the country’s then-ruler Hafez Assad.
He then presented himself as an opponent of Bashar Assad, traveling to Switzerland and later France.
He returned to Syria after 37 years in exile in France to escape a four-year prison sentence for money laundering and misappropriation of Syrian public funds.
Swiss court mulls closing Assad uncle war crimes case
https://arab.news/r54gm
Swiss court mulls closing Assad uncle war crimes case
- His part in February 1982 massacre in Hama, which left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead, earned him the nickname of “the Butcher of Hama”
- Tribunal said the defendant in his 80s was suffering from ailments preventing him from traveling and taking part in his trial
Is the United States after Venezuela’s oil?
- Companies from the US have pumped Venezuelan crude from the first discoveries there in the 1920s
- Venezuela exports about 500,000 barrels per day on the black market, mainly to China and other Asian countries
CARACAS: As US forces deployed in the Caribbean have zoned in on tankers transporting sanctioned Venezuelan oil, questions have deepened about the real motivation for Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Caracas.
Is the military show of force really about drug trafficking, as Washington claims? Does it seek regime change, as Caracas fears? Could it be about oil, of which Venezuela has more proven reserves than any other country in the world?
“I don’t know if the interest is only in Venezuela’s oil,” Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has offered to mediate in the escalating quarrel, said last week.
The US president himself has accused Venezuela of taking “all of our oil” and said: “we want it back.”
What we know:
- Oil ties -
Companies from the United States, now the world’s leading oil producer, have pumped Venezuelan crude from the first discoveries there in the 1920s.
Many US refineries were designed, and are still geared, specifically for processing the kind of heavy crude Venezuela has in spades.
Until 2005, Venezuela was one of the main providers of oil to the United States, with some monthly totals reaching up to 60 million barrels.
Things changed dramatically after socialist leader Hugo Chavez took steps in 2007 to further nationalize the industry, seizing assets belonging to US firms.
- And now? -
Down from a peak of more than three million barrels per day (bpd) in the early 2000s, Venezuela today produces about a million barrels per day — roughly two percent of the global total.
US firm Chevron extracts about 10 percent of the total under a special license.
Chevron is the only company authorized to ship Venezuelan oil to the United States — an estimated 200,000 barrels per day, according to a Venezuelan oil sector source.
The South American country’s domestic industry has declined sharply due to corruption, under-investment and US sanctions in place since 2019.
Analysts say the high investment required to rebuild Venezuela’s crumbling oil rigs would be unappetizing for US firms, given the steady global supply and low prices.
According to Carlos Mendoza Potella, a Venezuelan professor of petroleum economics, Washington’s actions were likely “not just about oil” but rather about the United States “claiming the Americas for itself.”
“It’s about the division of the world” between the United States and its rivals, Russia and China,” he added.
Venezuela exports about 500,000 barrels per day on the black market, mainly to China and other Asian countries, according to Juan Szabo, a former vice president of state oil company PDVSA.
- Blockade -
Trump on December 16 announced a blockade of sanctioned oil vessels sailing to and from Venezuela.
Days earlier, US forces seized the M/T Skipper, a so-called “ghost” tanker transporting over a million barrels of Venezuelan oil, reportedly destined for Cuba.
Washington has said it intends to keep the oil, valued at between $50 and $100 million.
Over the weekend, the US Coast Guard seized the Centuries, identified by monitoring site TankerTrackers.com as a Chinese-owned and Panama-flagged tanker.
An AFP review did not find the Centuries on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list, but the White House said it “contained sanctioned PDVSA oil” — some 1.8 million barrels of it.
On Sunday, officials said the Coast Guard was pursuing a third tanker, identified by news outlets as the Bella 1 — under US sanctions because of alleged ties to Iran.
The PDVSA insists its exports remain unaffected by the blockade.
This was critical, according to Szabo, as the company only has capacity to store oil for several days if exports stop.
- Impact -
Whatever Trump’s goal with Venezuelan oil, the blockade, if it continues, is likely to scare off shipping companies and push up freight rates.
Szabo expects Venezuela’s oil exports will fall by nearly half in the coming months, slashing critical foreign currency income from Venezuela’s black market sales.
This would asphyxiate the already struggling economy of Venezuela, piling more pressure on Nicolas Maduro.
The Trump administration has tip-toed around explicitly demanding for Maduro to leave.
While Trump has said he does not anticipate “war” with Venezuela, he did say Maduro’s days “are numbered.”
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Monday that the oil tanker seizures send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro’s participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone.”
