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France’s highest court Friday annulled a French arrest warrant against Syria’s ex-president Bashar al-Assad — issued before his ouster — over 2013 deadly chemical attacks.The Court of Cassation ruled there were no exceptions to presidential immunity, even for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.But its presiding judge, Christophe Soulard, added that, as Assad was no longer president after an Islamist-led group toppled him in December, “new arrest warrants can have been, or can be, issued against him” and as such the investigation into the case could continue.Human rights advocates had hoped the court would rule that immunity did not apply because of the severity of the allegations, which would have set a major precedent in international law towards holding accused war criminals to account.French authorities issued the warrant against Assad in November 2023 over his alleged role in the chain of command for a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,000 people, according to US intelligence, on August 4 and 5, 2013 in Adra and Douma outside Damascus.Assad is accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the case, though Syrian authorities at the time denied involvement and blamed rebels.The French judiciary tackled the case under the principle of universal jurisdiction, whereby a court may prosecute individuals for serious crimes committed in other countries.An investigation — based on testimonies of survivors and military defectors, as well as photos and video footage — led to warrants for the arrest of Assad, his brother Maher who headed an elite army unit, and two generals.Public prosecutors approved three of the warrants, but issued an appeal against the one targeting Assad, arguing he should have immunity as a head of state.The Paris Court of Appeal in June last year however upheld it, and prosecutors again appealed.French investigating magistrates in January issued a second arrest warrant against Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes for a bombing in the Syrian city of Deraa in 2017 that killed a French-Syrian civilian.

The United Nations rights chief on Friday slammed Britain’s ban on activist group Palestine Action as a “disturbing” misuse of UK counter-terrorism legislation and urged the government to rescind its move.”The decision appears disproportionate and unnecessary,” Volker Turk said in a statement.The ban, introduced under Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, took effect earlier this month after activists from the group broke into an air force base in southern England.Two aircraft were sprayed with red paint, causing an estimated £7.0 million ($9.55 million) in damage.Turk’s statement said the ban raised “serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature, and risks hindering the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms across the UK”.He stressed: “According to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages, for purpose of intimidating a population or to compel a government to take a certain action or not.”But the ban among other things makes it a criminal offence to be a member of Palestine Action, to express support for the group or wear items of clothing that would arouse “reasonable suspicion” that the person is a member or supporter of the group, Turk pointed out. – Peaceful protest -UK police have arrested at least 200 people during protests, many of them peaceful, over the ban since it took effect, the UN rights office said.Palestine Action itself has condemned its outlawing — which makes it a criminal offence to belong to or support the group, punishable by up to 14 years in prison — as an attack on free speech.The UN high commissioner for human rights agreed.The ban, Turk said, “limits the rights of many people involved with and supportive of Palestine Action who have not themselves engaged in any underlying criminal activity but rather exercised their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association”.”As such, it appears to constitute an impermissible restriction on those rights that is at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.”The rights chief warned that the government’s decision “also conflates protected expression and other conduct with acts of terrorism and so could readily lead to further chilling effect on the lawful exercise of these rights by many people”.”I urge the UK government to rescind its decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to halt investigations and further proceedings against protesters who have been arrested on the basis of this proscription,” he said.”I also call on the UK government to review and revise its counter-terrorism legislation, including its definition of terrorist acts, to bring it fully in line with international human rights norms and standards.”

One of France’s longest-held inmates, the pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, arrived in Beirut on Friday, having been released from prison after more than 40 years behind bars for the killings of two diplomats.At around 3:40 am (0140 GMT), a convoy of six vehicles with flashing lights left the Lannemezan prison in southwest France, AFP journalists saw.Hours later, the 74-year-old was placed on a plane and deported back to Lebanon, to be welcomed by family members on his return to Beirut at the airport’s VIP lounge.Dozens of supporters, some waving Palestinian or Lebanese Communist Party flags, gathered near the arrivals hall to give him a hero’s reception, an AFP correspondent said.In his first public address after being released, Abdallah took aim at Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, where human rights organisations have warned of mass starvation.”The children of Palestine are dying of hunger while millions of Arabs watch,” he said.”Resistance must continue and intensify,” added the former schoolteacher.Abdallah’s family had said previously they would take him to their hometown of Kobayat, in northern Lebanon, where a reception is planned.Abdallah was detained in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris.- ‘Past symbol’ -The Paris Court of Appeal had ordered his release “effective July 25” on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.While he had been eligible for release since 1999, his previous requests were denied with the United States — a civil party to the case — consistently opposing him leaving prison.Inmates serving life sentences in France are typically freed after fewer than 30 years.Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, visited him for a final time on Thursday. “He seemed very happy about his upcoming release, even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations,” Chalanset told AFP.The charge d’affaires of the Lebanese Embassy in Paris, Ziad Taan, who saw Georges Abdallah before his departure, told AFP that he was “well, in good health, very happy to return to Lebanon to his family and to regain his freedom”.AFP visited Abdallah last week after the court’s release decision, accompanying a lawmaker to the detention centre.The founder of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL) — a long-disbanded Marxist anti-Israel group — said for more than four decades he had continued to be a “militant with a struggle”.After his arrest in 1984, French police discovered submachine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments.The appeals court in February noted that the FARL “had not committed a violent action since 1984” and that Abdallah “today represented a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”.The appeals judges also found the length of his detention “disproportionate” to his crimes, and pointed to his age.burs-jh/djt/sbk

Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in war-ravaged Gaza as a trio of European powers prepared to hold an “emergency call” Friday on the deepening humanitarian crisis.Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the United Nations said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.With fears of mass starvation growing, Britain, France and Germany were set to hold an emergency call to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and discuss steps towards Palestinian statehood.”I will hold an emergency call with E3 partners tomorrow, where we will discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.The call comes after hopes of a new ceasefire in Gaza faded on Thursday when Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar. US envoy Steve Witkoff accused the Palestinian militant group of not “acting in good faith”.President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, drawing a furious rebuke from Israel.Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday welcomed the announcement, calling it a “victory for the Palestinian cause”.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state, calling it a security risk and a potential haven for “terrorists”.On Wednesday, a large majority in Israel’s parliament passed a symbolic motion backing annexation of the occupied West Bank, the core of any future Palestinian state.- ‘Mass starvation’ -More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called “man-made”.Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.The trickle of aid since then has been controlled by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, replacing the longstanding UN-led distribution system. Aid groups have refused to work with the GHF, accusing it of aiding Israeli military goals. The GHF system, in which Gazans have to travel long distances and join huge queues to reach one of four sites, has often proved deadly, with the UN saying that more than 750 Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed by Israeli forces near GHF centres since late May.An AFP photographer saw bloodied patients, wounded while attempting to get humanitarian aid, being treated on the floor of Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Thursday.Israel has refused to return to the UN-led system, saying that it allowed Hamas to hijack aid for its own benefit.Accusing Israel of the “weaponisation of food”, MSF said that: “Across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women, at MSF facilities last week, 25 per cent were malnourished.”It said malnutrition cases had quadrupled since May 18 at its Gaza City clinic and that the facility was enrolling 25 new malnourished patients every day.- ‘High risk of dying’ -On Thursday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that one in five children in Gaza City were malnourished.Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said: “Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.”He also warned that “UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all”.Lazzarini said that the agency had “the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies” ready to send into Gaza if Israel allowed “unrestricted and uninterrupted” access to the territory. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,587 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

France defended its decision to recognise Palestinian statehood amid domestic and international criticism on Friday, including against the charge that the move plays into the hands of militant group Hamas.President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that his country would formally recognise a Palestinian state during a UN meeting in September, the most powerful European nation to announce such a move.Macron’s announcement drew condemnation from Israel, which said it “rewards terror”, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “reckless” and said it “only serves Hamas propaganda”.Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, quipped that Macron did not say where a future Palestinian state would be located.”I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera & the new nation will be called ‘Franc-en-Stine’,” he said on X.Hamas itself — which is designated a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union — praised the French initiative, saying it was “a positive step in the right direction toward doing justice to our oppressed Palestinian people”.- ‘The side of peace’ -But French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Friday argued that Macron’s initiative went against what the militant group wanted.”Hamas has always ruled out a two-state solution. By recognising Palestine, France goes against that terrorist organisation,” Barrot said on X.With its decision, France was “backing the side of peace against the side of war”, Barrot added.Domestic reactions ranged from praise on the left, condemnation on the right and awkward silence in the ranks of the government itself.The leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), Jordan Bardella, said the announcement was “rushed” and afforded Hamas “unexpected institutional and international legitimacy”.Marine Le Pen, the RN’s parliamentary leader, said the French move amounted to “recognising a Hamas state and therefore a terrorist state”.On the other side of the political spectrum, Jean-Luc Melenchon, boss of the far-left France Unbowed party, called Macron’s announcement “a moral victory”, although he deplored that it did not take effect immediately.By September, Gaza could be a “graveyard”, Melenchon said.Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, a right winger whose relationship with Macron is tense, declined on Friday to give his opinion, saying he was currently busy with an unrelated “serious topic” linked to the “security of French people on holiday”.- ‘Counter-productive’, ‘pointless’ -But the vice president of his Les Republicains party, Francois-Xavier Bellamy, blasted the decision as possibly “counter-productive” or, at best, “pointless”.The move risked “endangering Israeli civilians” as well as “Palestinian civilians who are victims of Hamas’s barbarism”, he said.Bellamy said that Macron’s move was a departure from the president’s previously set conditions for recognition of Palestine, which included a Hamas de-militarisation, the movement’s exclusion from any future government, the liberation of all Israeli hostages in Gaza and the recognition of Israel by several Arab states.”None of them have been met,” he said.Among people reacting to the news in the streets of Paris was Julien Deoux, a developer, who said it had been “about time” that France recognised Palestinian statehood.”When you’ve been talking about two-state solutions for decades but you don’t recognise one of the two states, it’s a bit difficult,” he told AFP.But Gil, a 79-year-old pensioner who gave only his first name, said he felt “betrayed” by his president.”As a Frenchman, I’m ashamed to see that tomorrow Hamas could come to power in the territory,” he said.While France would be the most significant European country to recognise a Palestinian state, others have hinted they could do the same.Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he would hold a call on Friday with counterparts in Germany and France on efforts to stop the fighting, adding that a ceasefire would “put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state”.Germany, meanwhile, said on Friday it had no plans to recognise a Palestinian state “in the short term”.Norway, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia all announced recognition following the outbreak of the Gaza conflict, along with several other non-European countries.Once France follows through on its announcement, a total of at least 142 countries will have recognised Palestinian statehood.burs-jh/djt