According to legal sources, France has issued international arrest warrants on “complicity in acts of torture”, “complicity in crimes against humanity” and “complicity in war crimes” for three senior Syrian intelligence officials in connection with the deaths of two Franco-Syrian nationals. The officials sought are Ali Mamluk, National Security Bureau director, Jamil Hassan, head of the Syrian air force’s intelligence agency, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, in charge of the air force intelligence’s investigative branch at the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus. They are wanted in connection with the disappearance of Mazen and Patrick Dabbagh, a father and son, who were arrested in November 2013 and went missing after being detained in the Mezzeh detention centre, according to FIDH. The warrants were issued on 8 October but made public only on 5 November, according to the International Federation for Human Rights advocacy group (FIDH). Lawyers representing the Dabbagh family said the case could provide a new precedent for holding the Syrian government accountable. “The international arrest warrants demonstrate that the wall of impunity surrounding Syrian officials at the highest level can indeed be broken,” they said in a statement. Efforts to prosecute members of the Assad government have repeatedly failed because Syria is not a signatory of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague and due to the repeated vetoes by Russia and China.