Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on September 2, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
France has issued arrest warrants for Assad and six officials over the 2012 Homs attack, which targeted journalists and resulted in war crime charges.
PARIS (Reuters) -French investigating judges have issued arrest warrants for seven former top Syrian officials, including ex-President Bashar al-Assad, for the bombing of a press centre in Homs in 2012, a judicial source and a human rights organisation said on Tuesday.
Homs, in western Syria, was a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian civil war and was besieged by Assad government forces from 2011 to 2014. The siege ended with anti-Assad rebels withdrawing from the city.
A rocket hit the "informal press centre" on February 22, 2012, killing renowned American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and injuring two other journalists and an interpreter.
The International Federation for Human Rights said the seven former officials had been accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity for the attack on the centre.
France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts. The judicial source said the seven European arrest warrants had been issued last month.
Another human rights organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression, said the French judicial investigation had found that the attack had deliberately targeted foreign journalists.
"The judicial investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre in Bab Amr 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, a lawyer and the general director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, in a statement.
Assad fled to Russia in December 2024 when insurgent forces seized Syria with a rapid offensive, ending more than five decades of rule by his family.
(Reporting by Makini BriceEditing by Gareth Jones)
The arrest warrants were issued for the bombing of a press centre in Homs on February 22, 2012, which killed journalist Marie Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik.
The seven former officials are accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the attack on the informal press centre.
France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts, which is how these arrest warrants were issued.
The judicial investigation found that the attack was part of the Syrian regime's explicit intention to target foreign journalists.
Assad fled to Russia in December 2024 when insurgent forces seized Syria, ending over five decades of rule by his family.
Explore more articles in the Headlines category
