The Court of Cassation confirmed Friday, May 12 the jurisdiction of French justice to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria. Two Syrian nationals were trying to argue that France could not try them for such crimes, because such crimes do not exist in Syrian law. Finally, the highest French court has consecrated a non-restrictive interpretation of the conditions of application of the “universal jurisdiction” of France. A decision which therefore allows the continuation of investigations concerning these two Syrians, but also many other procedures.
For France to be able to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity committed abroad, when neither the perpetrators nor the victims are French, the law provides for several conditions, in particular that ” these acts are punishable by the legislation of the State where they were committed “.
But does this mean that war crimes and crimes against humanity must appear Alike in the laws of the foreign land, as the two Syrians asserted, or that it “ enough » That the offenses constituting these crimes, such as murder, rape, torture, be provided for in the common law of the country in question, as argued in particular by the International Federation for Human Rights?
The Court of Cassation ruled for this second interpretation, to the relief of Maitre Clémence Bectarte, FIDH lawyer: “ It was two Syrian cases that were threatened, but beyond that, it was almost half of the cases opened in France on the basis of universal jurisdiction that would have been stopped purely and simply if the Court of Cassation had not told us given reason. I am thinking of Libya, Sri Lanka, even Ukraine. In reality, there are as many countries which have not ratified the statute of the International Criminal Court and which have not codified crimes against humanity or war crimes either in their domestic laws. »
The threat hanging over these files on which investigators, judges and prosecutors have sometimes been working for years, to weigh heavily in the decision, believes Raphaël Kempf, lawyer for one of the Syrians. A decision which therefore seems to him “ more imprint of criminal policy than of legal arguments “.