by DIANA JOHNSTONE
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius PHOTO/Wikipedia
This Monday, September 7, seven Syrian citizens go to court in Paris to pursue their civil suit against French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. The five men and two women all lost family members and close friends in massacres by armed rebels supported by Fabius in word and deed. They are asking for one euro of symbolic damages.
In the end the suit will almost surely be thrown out. The September 7 hearing is on an appeal against an earlier ruling that the courts cannot judge acts of the government in this case, even if the complaint is founded. And yet this futile lawsuit makes a crucial point that Western politicians and media would much prefer to ignore.
Western leaders share major responsibility for making much of the world unfit for normal human habitation. And so far, they are getting away with it. The massive refugee crisis swamping Europe is just the beginning of the troubles that these unscrupulous leaders have brought on their own countries.
Laurent Fabius can fairly be called a French neoconservative. His alignment with Israeli policies is seen in the fact that he was the most reluctant of the foreign ministers involved in the Iranian nuclear negotiations to agree to the final settlement.
He has been one of the most gung-ho advocates of regime change in Syria, a country long on the neocon hit list for its Arab nationalism and support for the Palestinian cause.
The Syrian plaintiffs note that:
* On May 29, 2012, Fabius declared that France would intervene against the Syrian regime.
* On August 17, 2012, Fabius declared that Syrian President Bashar el Assad “did not deserve to be alive on earth”.
* On December 14, 2012, speaking out against the Obama administration decision to designate the Al Nusra Front as a terrorist group, Fabius objected that the Al Nusra Front was “doing a good job on the ground”.
* On March 13, 2013, Fabius announced that France and Britain were going to deliver arms to the rebels.
As a group, the plaintiffs maintain that by his declarations, Foreign Minister Fabius stirred up civil war in Syria and encouraged armed rebel attacks against the existing government. Individually, each of the plaintiffs lost family members and close friends in armed attacks and massacres carried out by the al Nusra militia allied rebel groups.
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