The cement group is suspected of having financed terrorist groups in 2013 and 2014. It is also indicted for “endangering the life of others”.
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In the already long soap opera of the Lafarge case, it is a hard setback for the cement maker: the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed, Wednesday, May 18, the indictment of the French group under control of the Swiss Holcim For “complicity of crimes against humanity” concerning its activities until 2014 in Syria. This indictment is added to those of “financing of a terrorist company” and “endangering the life of others”.
The decision of the Court of Appeal had been expected since the judgment of the Court of Cassation of September 2021 canceling the cancellation of the indictment for “complicity of crimes against humanity” decided by the Chamber of the ‘Instruction, in November 2019, at the request of Lafarge. The judges of Cassation had estimated that the complicity did not imply the will to participate or the approval of these crimes but the simple knowledge of the fact that the terrorist groups benefiting from the payments of the group committed themselves crimes against humanity, especially thanks to this money.
The actions of Lafarge, revealed by Le Monde in 2016, aimed to ensure the continuity of the production of the Jalabiya cement factory, in northern Syrian, inaugurated in 2010, a year before the revolution of the revolution in Syria. This factory, the largest in the Middle East, represented an investment of nearly 700 million euros and the French group did not want to abandon it in the hands of rebel groups which would surely have dismantled and sold in spare parts to scrap merchants. 2>
several million euros paid to terrorist groups
But the maintenance of the activity at all costs, as well as the passage of the company’s trucks and its employees, were mined by Lafarge up to several million euros, paid in 2013 and 2014 to Terrorist groups like the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) organization, which held dams in the area. The payments were made by the Syrian subsidiary of the group, Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS). After several hostages of employees released against ransoms paid to armed groups, the factory closed in the fall of 2014, when the site was taken by the jihadists of the IS.
These hostage -taking and the chaotic evacuation of employees, who had to fend for themselves almost alone to join the Turkish border, give rise to a third chief indicted: that of “endangering the life of ‘others “, claimed by former Syrian employees who have formed civil parties.
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