France issues arrest warrant for Bashar Assad over 2012 journalist killings in Syria

Marie Colvin, 56, an American working for The Sunday Times of Britain, and French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012 by the explosion in the eastern city of Homs, which is being investigated by the French judiciary as a potential crime against humanity as well as a war crime.

British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier and Syrian translator Wael Omar were wounded in the attack on the informal press centre where they had been working.

Assad escaped with his family to Russia after being ousted by rebels at the end of 2024 although his precise whereabouts have not been confirmed.

Other than Assad, the warrants notably target his brother Maher al-Assad who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armoured division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub.

“The issuing of the seven arrest warrants is a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” said Clemence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Ochlik’s parents.

The FIDH announced that the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing”.

“The investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre was part of the Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country,” stated Mazen Darwish, lawyer and director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).