PARIS — Syrian soldiers were the first at night to look for his son, Patrick, a 20-year-old psychology student at Damascus University, and said they were taking him away for questioning.
They returned the next night for their father, Mazen.
Five years later, in 2018, death certificates from Syrian authorities confirmed to the Dabbagh family that the French-Syrian father and son would never return home.
In a landmark trial, a Paris court this week seeks to determine whether Syrian intelligence officials – the highest-ranking to be tried in a European court for crimes allegedly committed during the country’s civil war – were responsible for their disappearances and deaths.
The four-day hearings began Tuesday and are expected to surface chilling allegations that President Bashar Assad’s government has widely used torture and arbitrary detention to stay in power during the conflict, now in its 14th year.
The French trial comes as Assad has been regaining an aura of international respectability, beginning to shake off his former pariah status that arose from the violence unleashed against his opponents. Human rights groups involved in the French case hope he will refocus attention on the alleged atrocities.
Here’s a look at those involved:
— Ali Mamlouk, former head of the National Security Office that oversees Syrian security and intelligence services. He allegedly worked directly with Assad. He is now over 70 years old.
— Jamil Hassan, former director of Air Force intelligence. Survivors testifying in the case claim to have seen him in a detention center in the capital, Damascus, where the Dabbaghs are believed to have been held. In his 70s.
— Salam Mahmoud, in his 60s, a former investigations officer at a military airport in Damascus believed to house the detention center. Mahmoud is alleged to have expropriated the Dabbaghs’ home after they were taken away.
The three men are accused of provoking crimes against humanity, giving instructions to commit them, and allowing their subordinates to commit them through the alleged arrest, torture, and murder of the father and son. They are also accused of confiscating their home and making Air Force intelligence services available to those who allegedly killed them.
The defendants are being tried in absentia. French magistrates issued arrest warrants for them in October 2018, despite acknowledging there was little chance they would be extradited to France. There were no defense attorneys representing them when the hearings began Tuesday morning. French magistrates determined that they do not have diplomatic immunity.
“The three accused people are very high-ranking officials in the Syrian system of repression and torture. This gives a particular tone to this trial. They are not small fish,” said Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for the human rights groups involved in the case.
“The legal file is very detailed, full of evidence of systematic, very diverse and absolutely monstrous torture practices,” Baudouin said.
Patrick and Mazen Dabbagh had dual French-Syrian nationality, allowing French magistrates to pursue the case. The investigation into his disappearance began in 2015, when Obeida Dabbagh, Mazen’s brother, testified before investigators already examining war crimes in Syria.
Obeida Dabbagh lives in France with his wife, Hanane, and is also a party to the case. According to the trial indictment, seen by The Associated Press, he told French investigators that three or four soldiers came looking for Patrick around 11 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2013, during the height of the protests. anti-government protests inspired by the Arab Spring and which were met with brutal repression. The soldiers identified themselves as members of an intelligence branch of the Syrian Air Force. Obeida also testified that they searched the house and took cell phones, computers and money.
They returned the next night for Mazen Dabbagh, who was 54 and worked as a counselor at a French high school in Damascus, and also took his new car, the brother said.
Their death certificates said Patrick died on January 21, 2014, and Mazen on November 25, 2017, but did not say how or where.
French investigating magistrates collected evidence from those who left the Syrian government and army, and from prison survivors as they prepared the case.
Testifying anonymously, survivors’ accounts speak of rape and being denied food and water; from hitting the feet, knees and other places with whips, cables and batons; from electric shocks and burns with acid or boiling water; from being suspended from the ceiling for hours or days.
Investigators also studied images provided by a Syrian police officer, who anonymously provided photographs of thousands of torture victims.
Cameras are generally prohibited in French criminal trials, but this one will be filmed for a historical record.
In a separate investigation, French magistrates have also taken aim at President Assad himself, but face questions over whether he benefits from presidential immunity.
Magistrates are investigating chemical weapons attacks that killed more than 1,000 people and injured thousands more in the Damascus suburbs in 2013. They issued international arrest warrants for Assad, his brother Maher Assad, commander of the 4th Armored Division, and two Syrian soldiers. generals — Ghassan Abbas and Bassam al-Hassan — for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The French investigation was opened in 2021 in response to a criminal complaint filed by survivors of the attack. The investigation is carried out under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which maintains that in some cases crimes can be prosecuted outside the countries where they occur.
The Syrian government and its allies have denied responsibility for the attacks.
The French orders, very rare for a serving world leader, were seen as a strong signal against Assad’s leadership at a time when some countries have welcomed him back into the diplomatic fold. Lawyers for the victims hailed the orders as “a crucial milestone in the battle against impunity.”
The Paris appeals court is weighing whether Assad has absolute immunity as head of state. French prosecutors asked him to comment on that issue at a closed-door hearing on May 15.
That procedure does not affect the arrest warrants against Assad’s brother and the generals.
In March, Swiss prosecutors charged Rifat Assad, the president’s uncle and former Syrian vice president, with allegedly ordering killings and torture more than four decades ago to crush an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement, in the city of Hama, where thousands were killed.
A Stockholm court in April tried a former Syrian army general living in Sweden for his alleged role in war crimes committed in 2012.
Two former Syrian soldiers were found guilty by German courts in 2021 and 2022 of crimes against humanity. One was sentenced to life imprisonment and the other to four and a half years for complicity. They had applied for refugee status in Germany before former detainees recognized them there. They were tried under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
___
Surk reported from Nice, France. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
