FILE PHOTO: Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks as he meets with the Syrian cabinet in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by Sana on March 30, 2021. SANA/Handout via REUTERS/ File Photo
PARIS (Reuters) -French investigating judges have issued arrest warrants for seven former top Syrian officials, including ex-President Bashar al-Assad, for the bombing of a press centre in Homs in 2012, a judicial source and a human rights organisation said on Tuesday.
Homs, in western Syria, was a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian civil war and was besieged by Assad government forces from 2011 to 2014. The siege ended with anti-Assad rebels withdrawing from the city.
A rocket hit the "informal press centre" on February 22, 2012, killing renowned American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and injuring two other journalists and an interpreter.
The International Federation for Human Rights said the seven former officials had been accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity for the attack on the centre.
France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts. The judicial source said the seven European arrest warrants had been issued last month.
Another human rights organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression, said the French judicial investigation had found that the attack had deliberately targeted foreign journalists.
"The judicial investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre in Bab Amr 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," said Mazen Darwish, a lawyer and the general director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, in a statement.
Assad fled to Russia in December 2024 when insurgent forces seized Syria with a rapid offensive, ending more than five decades of rule by his family.
(Reporting by Makini BriceEditing by Gareth Jones)
