France issues arrest warrants for 3 Syria intelligence officials

French prosecutors have issued international arrest warrants for three senior Syrian intelligence officials for crimes against humanity.

Le Monde newspaper said one of the warrants was issued for the head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, Ali Mamluk, who is also on the list of European sanctions imposed on the regime’s senior officials.

Arrest warrants were also issued for the head of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence, Jamil Hassan, and Abdel Salam Fajr Mahmoud who is in charge of the Air Force Intelligence investigative branch at the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus.

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The Syrian officials are accused of “committing acts of torture” as well as complicity in enforced disappearance, complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes.

The arrest warrants are issued in connection with a lawsuit filed by a Syrian-French citizen in October 2016 about the arrest, enforced disappearance and murder of his brother who is also a dual citizen and his nephew by the Syrian regime.

The French prosecution has also relied on photographs released by a man named “Caesar” who said he had served in the Syrian military police. The man fled Syria in 2013, along with nearly 50,000 photographs showing the bodies of prisoners who had been starved to death or had died of torture in Syria’s prisons between 2011 and 2013.