PARIS — France's top court on Tuesday overturned a
decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against cement giant
Lafarge for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria's civil war.
اضافة اعلان
The ruling by the Court of Cassation marks a major setback
for Lafarge, which is accused of paying nearly 13 millions euros to terrorist
groups including Daesh to keep its cement factory in northern Syria running
through the early years of the country's war.
Lafarge's lawyer refused AFP's request for comment.
Lafarge, which merged in 2015 with Swiss group Holcim, has
acknowledged that its Syrian subsidiary paid middlemen to negotiate with armed
groups to allow the movement of staff and goods inside the war zone.
But it denies any responsibility for the money winding up in
the hands of terrorist groups and has fought to have the case dropped.
The Paris Court of Appeal had in 2019 dismissed the crimes
against humanity charge, saying it accepted that the payments were not aimed at
abetting Daesh’s gruesome agenda of executions and torture.
It however ruled that the company be prosecuted on three
other charges — financing terrorism, violating an EU embargo, and endangering
the lives of others.
Eleven former employees of Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS)
challenged the decision at the Court of Cassation, with the backing of NGOs.
Quashing the lower court's finding on complicity, France's
highest court of appeal ruled Tuesday that "one can be complicit in crimes
against humanity even if one doesn't have the intention of being associated
with the crimes committed."
"Knowingly paying several million dollars to an organization
whose sole purpose was exclusively criminal suffices to constitute complicity,
regardless of whether the party concerned was acting to pursue a commercial
activity," it added.
The judges added that "numerous acts of
complicity" would go unpunished if courts adopted a more lenient
interpretation.
The ruling does not mean however that Lafarge will
automatically face trial on the most serious accusations laid against a French
company over its actions in a foreign country in recent years.
The court instead referred the matter back to investigating
magistrates to reconsider the complicity charge.
It also quashed the lower court's decision to maintain the
charge of endangering others, saying that it was not clear that French labor
law applied in the case and also referring that question back to investigators.
Shell precedent
The court did however uphold the charge of financing
terrorism, which Lafarge had fought to have dismissed.
Apart from the company, eight Lafarge executives, including
former CEO Bruno Laffont, are also charged with financing a terrorist group
and/or endangering the lives of others.
Lafarge eventually left Syria in September 2014 after Daesh
seized its plant in Jalabiya, around 150 kilometers northeast of the regional
capital Aleppo.
The company is not the first multinational to be accused of
complicity in crimes against humanity over its activity in a country where
people suffered serious rights abuses.
But such cases have rarely been brought to trial.
Twelve Nigerians took Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell to
court in the US, accusing it of abetting extra-judicial killings, torture, rape
and crimes against humanity in the Niger Delta in the 1990s.
The US Supreme Court in 2013 dismissed the case, saying US
courts did not have jurisdiction in the matter.
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