The personal immunity enjoyed by heads of state in practice cannot suffer from any exception, judged this Friday the Court of Cassation. It thus cancels the arrest warrant by Parisian investigation judges against the former Syrian-president Bashar al-Assad for fatal chemical attacks in 2013. The arrest warrant was issued in November 2023 while Bashar al-Assad “was still an in-practice head of state”, and was therefore not “regular”, said the president of the Court of Cassation, Christophe Soulard, during a public hearing unprecedented on the internet.
“However”, since Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and is no longer president, “new arrest warrants have been able to or may be issued against him for facts likely to constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” developed Christophe Soulard. The judicial information open against him can therefore continue, he added.
A long -awaited decision
This decision was eagerly awaited in France and abroad, in particular by human rights organizations engaged in the fight against the impunity of heads of state suspected of international crimes on their population. The Court did not follow the position of the prosecutor General Rémy Heitz who had proposed during the hearing on July 4 to maintain the arrest warrant against Bashar al-Assad, by dismissing the personal immunity from which he benefited because France no longer considered him since 2012 as the “legitimate head of state in exercise” having regard to “mass crimes committed by the Syrian power”.
On the other hand, the Court of Cassation recognized for the first time an exception to the functional immunity which the agents of foreign states benefit if they are prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment for complicity of a former governor of the Syrian central bank (2005-2016) and ex-minister of the Economy (2016-2017), Adib Mayaleh, is therefore validated.
