San Francisco Frontiers - France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges

French authorities arrested Majdi Nema, now 36, in the southern city of Marseille in 2020, after he travelled to the country on a student exchange programme.

He was detained and charged under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to prosecute suspects accused of serious crimes regardless of where they were committed.

This is the first time that crimes committed in Syria's civil war have been tried in France under the universal jurisdiction.

Nema -- better known by his nom-de-guerre of Islam Alloush -- has been charged with complicity in war crimes between 2013 and 2016, when he was spokesman for a Syrian Islamist rebel group called Jaish al-Islam.

However, Nema has said he only had a "limited role" in the armed opposition group that held sway in the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus during that period.

Jaish al-Islam was one of the main opposition groups fighting Bashar al-Assad's government before Islamist-led fighters toppled him in December but it has also been accused of terrorising civilians in areas it controlled.

Nema, who faces up to 20 years in jail if found guilty, has in particular been accused of helping recruit children and teenagers to fight for the group.

His arrest came after rights groups, including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), filed a criminal complaint in France in 2019 against members of Jaish al-Islam for their alleged crimes.

It was the FIDH that discovered Nema was in France during research into Jaish al-Islam's hierarchy and informed the French authorities.

Marc Bailly, a lawyer for the FIDH and some civil parties in the trial that runs to May 27, said the case would be "the opportunity to shed light on all the complexity of the Syrian conflict, which did not just involve regime crimes".

- Disappearances -

Born in 1988, Nema was a captain in the Syrian armed forces before defecting in 2012 and joining the group that would in 2013 become known as Jaish al-Islam.

He told investigators that he left Eastern Ghouta in May 2013 and crossed the border to Turkey, where he worked as the group's spokesman, before leaving the group in 2016.

He has cited his presence in Turkey as part of his defence.

Nema travelled to France in November 2019 under a university exchange programme and was arrested in January 2020.

The defendant was initially indicted for complicity in the enforced disappearances of four activists in Eastern Ghouta in late 2013 -- including prominent rights defender Razan Zaitouneh -- but those charges have since been dropped on procedural grounds.

Jaish al-Islam has been accused of involvement in the abduction, though it has denied this.

France has since 2010 been able to try cases under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which argues some crimes are so serious that all states have the obligation to prosecute offenders.

The country's highest court upheld this principle in 2023, allowing for the investigation into Nema to continue.

A previous trial in May of Syrians charged over their actions in the war took place because French nationals were the victims, rather than under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

A Paris court in that trial ordered life sentences for three top Syrian security officials linked to the former Assad government for their role in the torture and disappearance of a French-Syrian father and son in Syria in 2013.

They were tried in absentia.

Syria's conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more from their homes since it erupted in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

L.Nguyen--SFF