PARIS: French magistrates this summer issued a new arrest warrant against ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad over deadly chemical attacks in 2013, a judicial source said on Thursday.
This means France has now put out three separate arrest warrants against the former dictator exiled in Russia, who ruled Syria from 2000 until he was toppled last year after more than 14 years of devastating civil war.
French investigators have since 2021 been looking into suspected Syrian government chemical attacks on Adra and Douma outside Damascus on August 4-5, 2013, and in Eastern Ghouta on August 21.
Around 450 people were hurt in the first attack, while American intelligence says over 1,000 were killed with sarin nerve gas in East Ghouta, a suburb of Syrian capital Damascus.
Magistrates had in 2023 issued an arrest warrant in the chemical attacks case while Assad was still president, but the country’s highest court in July annulled it over it being ordered while his presidential immunity still applied.
