The Court of Cassation confirmed on Friday 12 May the jurisdiction of the French judiciary to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria. Two Syrian nationals were trying to argue that the France could not try them for such crimes, as these crimes do not exist in Syrian law.
In reality, so many countries have not ratified the Statute of the International Criminal Court and have not codified war crimes in their domestic laws. Nearly half of the cases opened in France on the basis of universal jurisdiction that would have been stopped purely and simply if the Court ofCassation had not ruled in our favour.