France Issues Arrest Warrant for Assad, Syrian Officials in Journalists’ Deaths in Homs By The Media Line Staff French judicial authorities issued arrest warrants Tuesday for former Syrian president Bashar Assad and six senior officials over the 2012 bombardment of Homs that killed American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik. The case, pursued […]
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The Media Line: France Issues Arrest Warrant for Assad, Syrian Officials in Journalists’ Deaths in Homs
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France Issues Arrest Warrant for Assad, Syrian Officials in Journalists’ Deaths in Homs
By The Media Line Staff
French judicial authorities issued arrest warrants Tuesday for former Syrian president Bashar Assad and six senior officials over the 2012 bombardment of Homs that killed American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik. The case, pursued in Paris, is being investigated as both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Colvin, 56, a veteran correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, and Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012, when Syrian forces shelled an improvised media center in the Baba Amr district of Homs, then under opposition control. Several others were injured, including British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier, and Syrian translator Wael Omar.
The warrants also target Assad’s brother Maher Assad, who commanded the 4th Syrian armored division at the time, former intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then–army Chief of Staff Ali Ayoub. Assad himself fled Syria with his family to Russia after being ousted by Islamist factions in late 2024, though his current location remains uncertain.
Clémence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and for Ochlik’s parents, welcomed the move. “The issuing of the seven arrest warrants is a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” she said.
The FIDH said the journalists had entered Homs secretly to report on atrocities committed by Assad’s forces and were victims of a “targeted bombing.” Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, added: “The investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press center was part of the Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country.”
Colvin, widely recognized for her fearless reporting, wore a black eye patch after losing sight in one eye in Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her legacy was later portrayed in the Golden Globe–nominated film A Private War.