alAssad

The IAEA has urged Syria to cooperate fully over allegations it had been building a covert nuclear reactor at the site – allegations Syria denies.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has said its inspectors discovered uranium particles at a site in Syria it suspects was once used as part of a clandestine nuclear programme run by the former government of Bashar al-Assad.

Last year, inspectors visited and took environmental samples at “three locations that were allegedly functionally related” to the remote desert site Deir el-Zour, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman Fredrik Dahl said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Analysis revealed a significant number of anthropogenic natural uranium particles in samples taken at one of the three locations. Some of these uranium particles are consistent with the conversion of uranium ore concentrate to uranium oxide,” said Dahl. This would be typical of a nuclear power reactor.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi reported these findings to the agency’s board of directors on Monday in a report on developments in Syria.

The report also stated that “the current Syrian authorities indicated that they had no information that might explain the presence of such uranium particles.”

The IAEA urged Syria on Tuesday to cooperate fully over allegations that it had been building a covert nuclear reactor at Deir Az Zor.

Syria has repeatedly denied these allegations.

The Deir Az Zor site only became public knowledge after Israel – which is the Middle East’s only state with nuclear weapons, although it has not declared its own programme – launched air strikes in 2007, destroying the facility. Syria later levelled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions.

An IAEA team visited some sites of interest last year while al-Assad was still in power. After al-Assad’s fall last December in a rebel offensive on the capital Damascus, the new government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa agreed to cooperate with the agency and again provided inspectors access to the site where the uranium particles had been found.

They took more samples there and “will evaluate the results of all of the environmental samples taken at this location and the information acquired from the planned visit to the site, and may conduct follow-up activities, as necessary”, Dahl said on Tuesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press news agency in June during a visit to Damascus, Grossi said al-Sharaa had expressed an interest in pursuing nuclear energy for Syria in the future. The IAEA said Syria granted its inspectors access to the location for a second time to gather more samples.

A number of other countries in the region are pursuing nuclear energy in some form. Grossi said Syria would most likely be looking into small modular reactors, which are cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional large ones.

He also said the IAEA is prepared to help Syria rebuild the radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and oncology infrastructure in a health system severely weakened by nearly 14 years of civil war.

A French court issues the warrants in connection with the bombing of a press centre in Homs in 2012 that killed two journalists.

A French court has issued arrest warrants for seven former top Syrian officials, including ex-President Bashar al-Assad, for the bombing of a press centre in Homs, a judicial source and a human rights organisation said.

A rocket hit the “informal press centre” on February 22, 2012, killing renowned US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and injuring two other journalists and an interpreter.

Besides al-Assad, who fled to Russia in December 2024 when opposition fighters seized control of Syria, warrants have also been issued against his brother Maher al-Assad, who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armoured division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub, among others.

France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression said that 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.

Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also noted that the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing”.

Clemence Bectarte, lawyer FIDH and Ochlik’s parents, welcomed Tuesday’s warrants and called it “a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.”

British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier and Syrian translator Wael Omar were also wounded in the attack on the informal press centre where they had been working.

Colvin was known for her fearless reporting and signature black eye patch, which she wore after losing sight in one eye in an explosion during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her career was celebrated in a Golden Globe-nominated film, A Private War.

Homs, in western Syria, was a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian war and was besieged by al-Assad government forces from 2011 to 2014. The siege ended with rebel forces withdrawing from the city.

The ruling might set a precedent to allow prosecution of other government leaders linked to atrocities.

France’s highest court is set to rule on whether it can strip the state immunity of Bashar al-Assad, the toppled Syrian leader in exile in Russia, because of the sheer brutal scale of evidence in accusations documented against him by Syrian activists and European prosecutors.

If the judges at the Cour de Cassation lift al-Assad’s immunity on Friday, it could pave the way for his trial in absentia over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013 and Douma in 2018.

It could also set a precedent to allow the prosecution of other government leaders linked to atrocities, human rights activists and lawyers say.

Al-Assad has retained no lawyers for these charges and has denied he was behind the chemical attacks.

The opposition has long rejected al-Assad’s denial, as his forces were the only side in the ruinous, nearly 14-year civil war to possess sarin.

A ruling against al-Assad would be “a huge victory for the victims”, said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, which collected evidence of war crimes, quoted by The Associated Press news agency.

“It is not only about Syrians; this will open the door for the victims from any country and this will be the first time that a domestic investigative judge has the right to issue an arrest warrant for a president during his rule.”

He said the ruling could enable his group to legally go after government members, like launching a money laundering case against former Syrian Central Bank governor and Minister of Economy Adib Mayaleh, whose lawyers have argued he had immunity under international law.

Brutal crackdown

For more than 50 years, Syria was ruled by Hafez al-Assad and then his son, Bashar.

During the Arab Spring, rebellion broke out against their rule in 2011 across the country of 23 million, igniting a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people, according to the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Millions more fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkiye and Europe.

The al-Assad dynasty also fomented sectarian tensions to stay in power, a legacy driving renewed recent violence in Syria against minority groups, despite promises that the country’s new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all its communities.

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for leaders accused of atrocities – such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines – the French judges’ ruling could empower the legal framework to prosecute not just deposed and exiled leaders but those currently in power.

The Syrian government denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, but the United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, then settled for a deal with Moscow for al-Assad to give up his chemical weapons stockpile, opening the way for Russia to wield huge influence in the war-torn nation.

Al-Assad survived more than a decade longer, aided militarily by Russia and Iranian-aligned groups, including Hezbollah, before being overthrown by rebel groups.