Three senior Syrian security officials accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity will be tried in their absence by the Paris Criminal Court in a four-day trial in May.
This will be the first such trial since the start of the civil war in Syria more than a decade ago, a lawyer involved in the trial told The National.
The trial, scheduled to take place between May 21 and May 24, comes seven years after a dual citizen, Obeida Dabbagh, filed a complaint requesting an investigation into the 2013 arrest in their Damascus home and subsequent death in detention of his brother Mazzen and his nephew Patrick.
“This is a very important court case which is not just about justice for Obeida’s family,” said his lawyer, Clemence Bectarte. “It is also for all the Syrians who, for various reasons, are not able to file a public complaint against their tormentors.”
The reason the trial is taking place in France is because Mazzen, a senior education adviser at the local French high school, and his son Patrick, a psychology student, held French and Syrian citizenship.
Neither were involved in the large-scale peaceful protests that shook the country in 2011 before escalating into a civil war, Ms Bectarte said.
The three accused men are well known in Syria and are widely viewed as being involved in the brutal crackdown by the Syrian government against protesters.
The three, all sanctioned by the European Union, at some point held senior jobs in the air force intelligence, a powerful and feared agency that was once commanded by the president’s father and predecessor, Hafez al Assad.
Mass killings
Since 2011, more than 112,000 people – about 5 per cent of the total population of Syria - have been arrested or forcibly disappeared, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Maj Gen Abdel Salam Mahmoud, director of investigation at air force intelligence, oversaw the detention centre in Mezzeh near Damascus at the time of Patrick and Mazzen’s arrest.
The United Nations has described the mass killings of thousands in Syrian prisons, particularly in the first years of the war, as a state policy of extermination of the civilian population.
The three French judges involved in the case also considered that decisions taken by Ali Mamlouk, a special adviser to President Bashar al Assad on security affairs and director of the national security bureau, played an important role in the repression against civilians, including arbitrary arrests such as those of Patrick and Mazzen.
Maj Gen Mamlouk is the direct superior of the third accused in this case, Maj Gen Jamil Hassan, the air force intelligence agency’s current director.
During their investigation, the judges involved in the case heard the testimonies of 23 Syrians living in the West who had either survived detention in Mezzeh or been confronted by one of the three accused.
Survivors described their living conditions, including routine torture and a high mortality rate.
“It’s important in this type of case to show that there is a pattern of repression,” Ms Bectarte told The National.
The Syrian government admitted to the death of Patrick and Mazzen in 2018 when it issued a large number of death certificates for people who had died in detention in the previous years.
Patrick died on January 21, 2014, and Mazzen on November 25, 2017. They were aged 20 and 61 at the time of their deaths.
The death certificates gave no explanation about how they died and their families never heard from them after their arrests on November 3 and 4, 2013, according to Ms Bectarte.
Men claiming to be from air force intelligence first arrested Patrick before returning the next night to detain his father, claiming they would teach him how to educate his son, according to witnesses.
The recognition of their deaths pushed French prosecutors in November 2018 to issue international arrest warrants for Maj Gen Mamlouk, Maj Gen Mahmoud and Maj Gen Hassan, who was already the subject of a German warrant.
Their trial was announced in April and its date was first reported by French newspaper Le Monde in July.
“It is important that proof is kept of these crimes in the hope that one day, even if it’s in several decades, there will be accountability in Syria,” Ms Bectarte said.
Obeida Dabbagh has been supported in the legal proceedings by the International Federation for Human Rights, the Human Rights League of France and the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, a non-governmental organisation in Paris.
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
Winners
Ballon d’Or (Men’s)
Ousmane Dembélé (Paris Saint-Germain / France)
Ballon d’Or Féminin (Women’s)
Aitana Bonmatí (Barcelona / Spain)
Kopa Trophy (Best player under 21 – Men’s)
Lamine Yamal (Barcelona / Spain)
Best Young Women’s Player
Vicky López (Barcelona / Spain)
Yashin Trophy (Best Goalkeeper – Men’s)
Gianluigi Donnarumma (Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City / Italy)
Best Women’s Goalkeeper
Hannah Hampton (England / Aston Villa and Chelsea)
Men’s Coach of the Year
Luis Enrique (Paris Saint-Germain)
Women’s Coach of the Year
Sarina Wiegman (England)
T20 World Cup Qualifier
October 18 – November 2
Opening fixtures
Friday, October 18
ICC Academy: 10am, Scotland v Singapore, 2.10pm, Netherlands v Kenya
Zayed Cricket Stadium: 2.10pm, Hong Kong v Ireland, 7.30pm, Oman v UAE
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Rameez Shahzad, Darius D’Silva, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zawar Farid, Ghulam Shabber, Junaid Siddique, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Waheed Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Zahoor Khan
Players out: Mohammed Naveed, Shaiman Anwar, Qadeer Ahmed
Players in: Junaid Siddique, Darius D’Silva, Waheed Ahmed
Directed: Smeep Kang
Produced: Soham Rockstar Entertainment; SKE Production
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Jimmy Sheirgill, Sunny Singh, Omkar Kapoor, Rajesh Sharma
Rating: Two out of five stars
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Who was Alfred Nobel?
The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.
- In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
- Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
- Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.
THE BIO:
Favourite holiday destination: Thailand. I go every year and I’m obsessed with the fitness camps there.
Favourite book: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It’s an amazing story about barefoot running.
Favourite film: A League of their Own. I used to love watching it in my granny’s house when I was seven.
Personal motto: Believe it and you can achieve it.
States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press
Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Batti Gul Meter Chalu
Producers: KRTI Productions, T-Series
Director: Sree Narayan Singh
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Divyenndu Sharma, Yami Gautam
Rating: 2/5
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: seven-speed
Power: 720hp
Torque: 770Nm
Price: Dh1,100,000
On sale: now
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
