Lafarge Charged with Complicity in Crimes against Humanity in Syria

World

The French cement giant Lafarge was charged on Thursday with complicity in crimes against humanity and financing terror groups, for paying millions to terrorists, including the so-called Islamic State (Daesh) terror group, to “keep a factory open in Syria”.

The company has also been charged with endangering the lives of former employees at the cement plant in Jalabiya, northern Syria, the Guardian reported.

Lafarge, which has since merged with Swiss firm Holcim, immediately said it would appeal against the charges.

The accusations are the most serious against a French company in years.

A panel of three judges in Paris ordered Lafarge to hand over €30m (£27m) to authorities as a security deposit ahead of the trial.

Eight former executives, including the former chief executive Bruno Lafont, have already been charged with financing a terrorist group and/or endangering the lives of others over Lafarge’s activities in Syria between 2011 and 2015.

 Lafarge is suspected of paying nearly €13m to Daesh and other militant groups to “keep the Jalabiya plant running long after other French companies had pulled out of Syria.”

According to investigators, some of the cash was also used to buy petrol and other raw materials from suppliers close to Daesh.

A source close to the inquiry said investigators also suspected that Lafarge sold cement to Daesh.

H.M

You might also like
World

Lavrov calls for increasing urgent humanitarian aid to the Syrian people

World

Prayers in Saint Georges Patriarchal Cathedral in Bab Touma in memory of the martyrs…

World

US Private Military Companies Plunder Syrian Oil Facilities

World

All JCPOA Signatories Call for Saving the Pact, Says China

.. _copyright: Copyright ========= .. code-block:: none Copyright (C) 1998-2000 Tobias Ratschiller Copyright (C) 2001-2018 Marc Delisle Olivier Müller Robin Johnson Alexander M. Turek Michal Čihař Garvin Hicking Michael Keck Sebastian Mendel [check credits for more details] This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Third party licenses ++++++++++++++++++++ phpMyAdmin includes several third-party libraries which come under their respective licenses. jQuery's license, which is where we got the files under js/vendor/jquery/ is (MIT|GPL), a copy of each license is available in this repository (GPL is available as LICENSE, MIT as js/vendor/jquery/MIT-LICENSE.txt). The download kit additionally includes several composer libraries. See their licensing information in the vendor/ directory.