France investigates alleged crimes against humanity by Assad

The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday that it had opened an investigation this month into Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for alleged crimes against humanity, launching a case that highlights the divisions between the world’s major military powers over relations with the autocrat.

Fabius said the opening of the French probe should not prevent the United Nations and particularly its global Commission of Inquiry on Syria to press on with their own investigations. It is unclear who might eventually be charged and whether French investigators would travel to war-torn Syria.

On Tuesday the USA leader said removing Assad was a vital step to defeating the Islamic State group, which has taken advantage of the chaos in Syria to bring large parts of the country and neighboring Iraq under its rule.

He said France had evidence that foreign fighters were being trained in camps in Syria to carry out attacks in Europe. Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York that there’s no authoritative information yet on “the targets and methods of these airstrikes“.

On Monday, Hollande nodded again toward the need to work with Syrians who want to free their country of both those violent actors.

“If Bashar Assad accepts the political process where he transitions out of the country, I think we can get somewhere”, Al-Jubeir said, “but we haven’t seen any indication that he would do this, nor have we seen any indication that his two main supporters, Russian Federation and Iran, are prepared to push him in that direction”.

Feinstein, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said help from “Russia and Iran in a political solution for Syria is important”.

While the mission was led by the French fighters, the U.S.-led coalition group helped in the attack that saw the deployment of six aircrafts.

Jubeir would not be drawn on specifics of what the military option would look like, but noted that Saudi Arabia is already supporting “moderate rebels” in their battle against Assad. On Wednesday, Putin received permission from Russia’s parliament to deploy troops overseas – potentially to Syria.

In Iraq, a spokesman for Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadai said officials in Baghdad are in talks with the Russians about cooperation in the hope that shared intelligence “will further our abilities to defeat the terrorists that are within our borders”.