PARIS, November 15. /TASS/. A French court has issued an arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar Assad on charges of using chemical weapons in 2013, the AFP news agency reported citing sources.
According to the agency, a total of four arrest warrants have been issued regarding the use of chemical weapons. In addition to the Syrian leader, charges have been brought against his brother Maher Assad, who is the commander of the Syrian Republican Guard (an elite military unit dedicated to protecting the Syrian authorities), as well as two other generals, whose names were not specified.
All four are charged with crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes. Damascus has not yet commented on the arrest warrant against Assad.
Elimination of chemical weapons stockpiles
The first reports about the use of chemical agents in Syria appeared on December 23, 2012. According to the Syrian opposition, a chemical attack by the country’s armed forces killed six people in Bayda, a suburb of Homs. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry said in July 2013 that the UN Secretariat had received 13 reports of chemical weapons use in Syria. A month later, experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed five more cases. The most tragic of them occurred in a highly populated suburb of Damascus - Eastern Ghouta - on August 21, 2013. Between 300 and 1,700 people, including hundreds of children, were killed by shells containing the nerve agent sarin.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) estimated the total number of injured at 3,500 people. Both the Syrian authorities and the opposition rejected the accusations that the chemical weapon was used.
Despite the fact that the OPCW report on the chemical attacks in Eastern Ghouta did not establish the involvement of either party, Western countries held the Assad government responsible for the use of chemical weapons. Then-US President Barack Obama said that Syria's use of chemical weapons would be considered by Washington as crossing a red line, after which the international community would be obliged to take measures against the country.
The crisis was resolved thanks to Russia's mediation, which put forward a plan for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons and got the Syrian leadership to agree to placing its stockpiles under international control. This plan was approved by the UN Security Council on September 27, 2013 (Resolution 2118). In September 2013, Syria joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and became a member of the OPCW. The country declared 1,300 tons of toxic substances. The production of chemical agents and their components was concentrated in the Damascus region, in Homs, in Hama and in Aleppo. The joint mission of the UN and the OPCW, established in 2013, monitored the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal. After the stockpiles of chemical weapons were removed from Syria in June 2014, the mission ceased to exist.