Philomina Brando
French judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and six other senior former officials over the bombardment of the city of Homs in 2012 that killed two journalists.
The move marks a significant step in holding members of the Assad regime accountable for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Marie Colvin, 56, a celebrated American correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times, and French photographer Rémi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012, when Syrian government forces shelled an improvised press centre in Homs. Several others were seriously wounded, including British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier, and Syrian translator Wael Omar.
The case has been under investigation in France for more than a decade. French prosecutors say the deaths of Colvin and Ochlik were not accidental but the result of a deliberate strategy by Syrian forces to silence independent reporting from the war zone.
“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,” said Clémence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Ochlik’s parents.
The FIDH said the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing.”
Mazen Darwish, lawyer and director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), added: “The investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre 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.”
Besides Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted by Islamist rebels at the end of 2024 and fled with his family to Russia, the warrants target several key figures of his regime. They include his brother Maher al-Assad, who commanded the 4th Armoured Division; former intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk; and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub.
Their prosecution, if it proceeds, would be one of the rare instances of a sitting or former head of state being pursued in a European court for crimes committed during a brutal civil conflict.
Marie Colvin was one of the most prominent war correspondents of her generation. Known for her fearless reporting from conflict zones such as Chechnya, Sri Lanka, and Libya, she famously wore a black eye patch after losing an eye during an explosion in Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her story was later dramatized in the Golden Globe-nominated film A Private War.
Colvin’s death, alongside that of Rémi Ochlik, shocked the international journalism community and prompted calls for greater accountability in protecting reporters covering conflicts.
Legal experts say the arrest warrants could complicate international travel for Assad and his associates, even if their trial in France remains uncertain while they remain in Russia or other allied states.
For rights advocates, however, the move represents progress. “This is an important moment for justice and for the families of Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik,” Bectarte said. “It sends a strong signal that crimes against journalists will not go unpunished.”
The warrants underscore France’s commitment to pursuing accountability for war crimes in Syria, more than a decade after the Homs attack highlighted the dangers journalists face when reporting from the frontlines of war.