France seeks arrest of Bashar al-Assad over deadly 2012 attack on foreign journalists

Warrants against former Syrian leader and other top regime officials issued as part of war crimes probe into killing of correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik

By AFP 3 September 2025, 5:29 am

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A memorial plaque remembering US-born Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, who were both killed while working in Syria, at St Brides Church on Fleet Street in London on February 22, 2012. (Justin Tallis/AFP)

PARIS — French judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and six other top former officials over the bombardment of a rebel-held city in 2012 that killed two journalists, lawyers said Tuesday.

Marie Colvin, 56, an American working for The Sunday Times of Britain, and French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012 by the explosion in the eastern city of Homs, which is being investigated by the French judiciary as a potential crime against humanity as well as a war crime.

British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier and Syrian translator Wael Omar were wounded in the attack on the informal press center where they had been working.

Assad escaped with his family to Russia after being ousted by Islamist rebels at the end of 2024 although his precise whereabouts have not been confirmed.

Other than Assad, the warrants notably target his brother Maher al-Assad who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armored division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub.

“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 Clemence Bectarte, lawyer for the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Ochlik’s parents.

An anti-government fighter tears down a portrait of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo, after jihadists and their allies entered the northern Syrian city, on November 30, 2024. (Mohammed AL-RIFAI / AFP)

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.”

“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,” said Mazen Darwish, lawyer and director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).

Colvin was known for her fearless reporting and signature black eye patch which she wore after losing sight in one eye in an explosion during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her career was celebrated in a Golden Globe-nominated film, “A Private War.”