Syrian and international human rights groups and victims’ associations called upon the French government to support the independent investigation against Bashar Al-Assad on the 2013 Syrian chemical attack in a joint statement published on Wednesday.

The 39 organisations, among which the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression and Amnesty International, saluted international efforts to bring the Syrian president to justice for the attacks which killed over 1,000 people, breaching international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law.

France initiated an investigation in 2021 into two chemical weapons attacks that occurred in Ghouta, Syria in August 2013 after the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) and other NGOs filed a complaint with the French Specialized Unit for Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes of the Paris Judicial Court. Following the investigating judges’ conclusion on the sufficiency of the evidence, France issued arrest warrants for Al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, the de facto chief of the Syrian elite military unit, as well as two high-ranking armed forces generals in November 2023.

However, the joint statement also condemned the decision of the French National Anti-Terror Public Prosecutor’s Office to challenge the validity of the arrest warrant against Bashar al-Assad in December. The Office contended that the arrest warrants constituted an exception to the principle of absolute immunity granted to heads of state from foreign jurisdiction and inviolability. The organisations stated that while arrest warrants for other detainees are still effective, the French Public Prosecutor should not have argued that Bashar al-Assad be immune from trial and prosecution in France as head of state. The joint statement read in this regard:

Recent decades have seen an erosion of state immunities and functional immunities under international law to prevent impunity for international crimes, notably war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is now time to also challenge the personal immunity of the sitting head of state for international crimes. In the context of Syrian chemical attacks, the international community and the UN Security Council have repeatedly demanded that all perpetrators must be held accountable.

The human rights groups further argued that the decision is contrary to France’s obligations as a leader of the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, and called on the French government to reiterate its stance against the use of chemical weapons and for the investigation of those responsible. It urged the country to “convey a resolute message to the world: the use of chemical weapons is forbidden, and all perpetrators will face justice.”

Al-Assad’s regime was subject to another investigation in a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the use of chemical weapons in 2018 in Douma that killed 43 people, which the Syrian Foreign Ministry rejected.

As the Syrian civil war has lasted for more than a decade, leaving more than half a million people dead and millions displaced, the human rights groups called for a “concerted international effort to enforce the French arrest warrants” in order to guarantee redress to the victims of the attacks.