What could possibly have gone wrong? To have denied him a visa would have been “Islamophobic.”

“Paris Court of Appeal upholds charges against Syrian accused of torture and war crimes,” translated from “La cour d’appel de Paris maintient les poursuites contre un Syrien accusé de torture et de crimes de guerre,” Le Figaro, April 4, 2022:

The Paris Court of Appeal has rejected the request of a former Syrian Islamist rebel who challenged his indictment for torture, war crimes and complicity in kidnapping, the Paris prosecutor general announced on Monday April 4 in a press release.

“In a judgment delivered today, the investigating chamber, in accordance with the requisitions of the public prosecutor, rejected Majdi Nema’s request and returned to the investigating judge for further information,” indicated Rémy Heitz. “The investigating chamber therefore did not follow the solution which had been adopted by the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation in a judgment of November 24, 2021 (Chaban judgment) in terms of crimes against humanity,” he emphasized.

War crimes and crimes against humanity
In this Chaban judgment, the Court of Cassation considered that French justice was incompetent in the case of another Syrian, a former soldier of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, prosecuted for complicity in crimes against humanity. This decision had caused an earthquake in the judiciary and human rights organizations, which feared that this decision would set a precedent and have serious repercussions on other investigations of this type. Starting with that targeting Majdi Nema, former spokesperson for the group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam, JAI) arrested in January 2020 in France, who requested the cancellation of the proceedings against him.