It was the case of two Syrians, one prosecuted for complicity in crimes against humanity, the other for torture and war crimes, which led to this decision. The Court of Cassation ruled against them, estimating this Friday that the jurisdiction of French justice was universal to prosecute foreign perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed outside France on foreign nationals.
“The Court recognizes that French justice has this “universal jurisdiction” in two cases which concern Syria”, indicated in a press release the highest judicial court which rendered two judgments specifying the conditions under which French justice was competent.
The principle of “dual criminality”
The Court had received appeals from two Syrians: one filed by Abdulhamid Chaban, a former soldier arrested in France and indicted for complicity in crimes against humanity in February 2019, and the other by Majdi Nema, a former -says the Syrian rebel group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), prosecuted for torture and war crimes.
In November 2021, the Court, already seized of the Chaban case, had considered that French justice was incompetent in this case, invoking the principle of “double incrimination” provided for in the law of August 9, 2010: crimes against humanity and war crimes must be recognized in the country of origin of a suspect whom France intends to prosecute. However, Syria does not recognize these crimes and has not ratified the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court.
Crimes and misdemeanors “by equivalence”
This judgment had caused an earthquake in the legal world and human rights organizations. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a civil party, had lodged an opposition for a procedural reason, allowing the case to be returned to the Court of Cassation. In the case of Majdi Nema, former spokesperson for the rebel group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), arrested in January 2020 in Marseilles where he was on a study trip, the Paris Court of Appeal maintained his indictment in April 2022, considering that Syrian law provided “by equivalence” for several war crimes and offenses defined in the French Penal Code.
The Court of Cassation followed this position on Friday, therefore returning to the one previously adopted in the Chaban case. “For there to be dual incrimination, it is not necessary that the facts relating in France to offenses of crimes against humanity or war crimes be qualified in an identical manner by the laws of the foreign country”, a- she decided on Friday. It suffices “that the foreign legislation punishes these acts as common law offenses such as murder, rape or torture”. Both appeals were dismissed, allowing the two judicial inquiries to continue.