Syrian officials face arrest for journalists’ murder

French judges are expected to issue arrest warrants for senior political and military officials from the Assad regime after prosecutors broadened their inquiry into the assassination of a reporter and a photographer.

Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin was murdered in Syria in 2012

French judges are expected to issue arrest warrants for senior political and military officials from the regime of the former ­Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after prosecutors broadened their inquiry into the assassination of Marie Colvin, The Sunday Times war ­reporter.

The anti-terrorism and war crimes prosecution service has widened the scope of its inquiry into the death in Syria in February 2012 of Colvin, a London-based American, and Remi Ochlik, a French photographer, to include crimes against humanity.

The prosecutors’ office said investigators had new evidence that shows “the execution of a concerted plan against a group of ­civilians, including journalists, activists and defenders of human rights, as part of a wide-ranging or systematic attack”.

A federal court in Washington DC ruled in a civil suit in 2019 that the Syrian military had targeted Colvin and representatives of other foreign media organisations with an artillery barrage after identifying the makeshift media centre from which they were covering the siege of the rebel-held city of Homs.

It ordered Syria to pay $US302.5m over Colvin’s death.

Under French law, prosecutors have “universal jurisdiction” in cases involving crimes against humanity. This gives them powers to investigate acts committed anywhere in the world by people of any nationality.

The families of Colvin and Ochlik and humanitarian organisations welcomed the move, which comes two months after the fall of the Assad regime and the discovery of records and other evidence of mass atrocities over the 54 years in which Hafez al-Assad and later his London-educated son Bashar were in power.

Scott Gilmore, a lawyer who represents Cathleen Colvin, the journalist’s sister, said: “The Colvin family calls on the new Syrian government to co-operate with investigators to hold the perpetrators of atrocities like the murder of Marie accountable.”

Clemence Bectarte, who is representing Ochlik’s family, said she now expected judges to issue arrest warrants “for the high-ranking political and military officials whose involvement has been established”.

Bashar al-Assad said in 2016 that Colvin had brought her death on herself. “She worked with the terrorists, and because she came illegally, she was responsible for everything that befell her,” he said in an NBC interview.

Colvin, who was 56 when she died, had earned an international reputation as a fearless war correspondent.

She was played by Rosamund Pike in A Private War, a 2018 film based on her life and career.

THE TIMES