The accused was born in 1962, resides abroad, and was arrested in southern France, according to what AFP learned from a source close to the file.
A judicial source told AFP that at the end of his police custody, he was charged with “conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity, complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes”, and he was placed in pretrial detention.
The war in Syria has killed nearly half a million people, in the largest conflict-related displacement since World War II.
Syria denies using chemical weapons, and stresses that it handed over its stockpiles of weapons under an agreement concluded in 2013 with the United States and Russia, following a sarin gas attack that killed 1,400 people in Eastern Ghouta to Damascus.
But Damascus was stripped of its voting rights in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in April, after an investigation held it responsible for other poison gas attacks.
Its rights will remain suspended until it declares all of its chemical weapons and manufacturing facilities.
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