France’s highest court is to decide Friday whether to uphold an arrest warrant against Syria’s ex-president Bashar al-Assad as part of a probe into deadly 2013 chemical attacks during the country’s civil war.Rights activists say that if the Court of Cassation confirms Assad does not enjoy immunity due to the severity of the accusations, it could set a major precedent in international law towards holding war criminals to account.But if the reasoning is that the warrant is valid because France did not consider Assad to be a legitimate ruler at the time of the alleged crimes, it would not have the same impact.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.Assad’s circumstances have since changed.He and his family fled to Russia, according to Russian authorities, after Islamist-led rebels toppled him in December last year.- Assad immunity issue -Agnes Callamard, a French human rights activist and the secretary general of Amnesty International, said the court’s decision could “pave the way for a major precedent in international law” if it decided immunity should be lifted in certain cases.”A ruling lifting Bashar al-Assad’s immunity would help strengthen the founding principles of international law in its fight against the impunity of war criminals,” she wrote in the newspaper Liberation on Thursday.Callamard however noted that it was unlikely any arrest warrant would lead to Assad being detained as he was protected by Russia.The high court’s prosecutor has recommended the arrest warrant be upheld, but on the grounds that France had not recognised Assad as the legitimate ruler of Syria since 2012.Mazen Darwish, a prominent Syrian lawyer who heads the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, a civil party to the case, said the prosecutor’s argument was “very clever”.But it “undermines the moral foundation” according to which “immunity should not apply” in cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he said.The reasoning “also grants a single foreign government the power to decide who is or is not a legitimate head of state, which sets an extremely dangerous precedent”, he said.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.Friday’s hearing is scheduled to start at 1300 GMT.

One of France’s longest-held inmates, the pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, will be released and deported on Friday, after more than 40 years behind bars for the killings of two diplomats.At around 3:40 am (01:30 GMT), a convoy of six vehicles left the Lannemezan penitentiary with lights flashing, AFP journalists saw, though they were unable to catch a glimpse of the 74-year-old grey-bearded prisoner.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.The Paris Court of Appeal had ordered his release “effective July 25” on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.He had been eligible for release since 1999, but his previous requests were denied as the United States — a civil party to the case — consistently opposed him leaving prison.Inmates serving life sentences in France are typically freed after fewer than 30 years.Once out of prison, Abdallah is set to be transported to the Tarbes airport where a police plane will take him to Roissy for a flight to Beirut, according to a source close to the case.Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, visited 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.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 the crimes and given his age.Abdallah’s family said they plan to meet him at Beirut airport’s “honour lounge” before heading to their hometown of Kobayat in northern Lebanon where a reception is planned. 

The party that once dominated Tunisian politics has faded away since President Kais Saied staged a dramatic power grab, with its offices shuttered and leaders behind bars or in exile.But observers say that Ennahdha, the Islamist-inspired movement still considered by some Tunisians as the country’s main opposition party, could still bounce back after a devastating government crackdown.On July 25, 2021, Saied stunned the country when he suspended parliament and dissolved the government, a move critics denounced as a “coup” a decade after the Arab Spring revolt ushered in a democratic transition in the North African country.Many of Saied’s critics have been prosecuted and jailed, including Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi, 84, a former parliament speaker who was sentenced earlier this month to 14 years in prison for plotting against the state.Ghannouchi, who was arrested in 2023, has racked up several prison terms, including a 22-year sentence handed in February on the same charge.The crackdown over the past four years has seen around 150 Ennahdha figures imprisoned, prosecuted or living in exile, according to a party official.”Some believe the movement is dead, but that is not the case,” said political scientist Slaheddine Jourchi.Ennahdha has been “weakened to the point of clinical death” but remained the most prominent party in Tunisia’s “fragmented and fragile” opposition, Jourchi added.- ‘Once we’re free again’ -Riadh Chaibi, a party official and adviser to Ghannouchi, said that even after “shrinking” its political platform, Ennahdah was still a relevant opposition outlet.”Despite repression, prosecutions and imprisonment” since 2021, “Ennahdha remains the country’s largest political movement,” Chaibi said.He said the current government has been “weaponising state institutions to eliminate political opponents”, but “once we’re free again, like we were in 2011, Ennahdha will regain its strength”.Since 2011, when Ghannouchi returned from exile to lead the party, Ennahdha for years had a key role in Tunisian politics, holding the premiership and other senior roles.But by 2019, the year Saied was elected president, the party’s popularity had already begun waning, winning only a third of the 1.5 million votes it had in 2011.Experts ascribed this trend to the party’s failure to improve living standards and address pressing socio-economic issues.Ennahdha has also been accused of jihadist links, which it has repeatedly denied.Saied, who religiously avoids mentioning either Ennahdha or Ghannouchi by name, has often referred to the party’s years in power as “the black decade” and accused it of committing “crimes against the country”.Crowds of Tunisians, increasingly disillusioned as a political deadlock trumped Ennahdha’s promise of change, poured into the streets in celebration when Saied forced the party out of the halls of power in 2021.Analyst Jourchi said Ennahdha’s rise to power was a “poorly prepared adventure”, and the party had “made many mistakes along the way”.Left-wing politician Mongi Rahoui said it was “only natural that Ennahdha leaders and their governing partners be prosecuted for crimes they used their political position to commit”.Today, the party’s activities have been reduced mostly to issuing statements online, often reacting to prison sentences handed down to critics of Saied.- ‘Silence everything’ -But Ennahdha has weathered repression before, harshly suppressed under Tunisia’s autocratic presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.Party leaders were jailed or forced into exile, and Ghannouchi was sentenced to life in prison under Bourguiba but then freed — and later exiled — under Ben Ali.Tunisian historian Abdellatif Hannachi said that the party “seems to be bending with the wind, waiting for changes that would allow it to return”.It has been in “clear decline”, he added, but “that does not mean it’s disappearing.”Ennahdha’s downfall was not an isolated case. Other opposition forces have also been crushed, and dozens of political, media and business figures are currently behind bars.”This regime no longer distinguishes between Islamist and secular, progressive and conservative,” rights advocate Kamel Jendoubi, a former minister, recently said in a Facebook post.Saied’s government “wants to silence everything that thinks, that criticises, or resists”, Jendoubi argued.The opposition, however, remains fractured, failing for example to come together in rallies planned for the anniversary this month of Saied’s power grab.