The French judiciary is investigating the 2012 deaths of reporters in Syria as a possible crime against humanity, anti-terror prosecutors told AFP on Tuesday.
Prominent US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed by an explosion in the east of the war-torn country in what a US court later ruled was an "unconscionable" attack that targeted journalists on the orders of the Syrian government.
The French judiciary had been treating the alleged attack as a potential war crime, but on December 17 widened the investigation to a possible crime against humanity, a charge for which French courts claim universal jurisdiction regardless of locations or nationalities involved.
The anti-terror prosecutors' office told AFP that new evidence pointed to "the execution of a concerted plan against a group of civilians, including journalists, activists and defenders of human rights, as part of a wide-ranging or systematic attack".
Colvin -- a renowned war correspondent whose career was celebrated in a Golden Globe-nominated film "A Private War" -- was killed in the Syrian army's shelling of the Baba Amr Media Center in Homs on February 22, 2012.
- 'A great step forwards' -
The federal court in the US capital, which in 2019 ordered Syria to pay $302.5 million over her death, said in its verdict that Syrian military and intelligence had tracked the broadcasts of Colvin and other journalists covering the siege of Homs to the media centre.
They then targeted it in an artillery barrage that killed Colvin and Ochlik.
French investigators also believe that both were "deliberately targeted".
In addition, they told AFP, they extended the probe to cover suspected Syrian government "persecution" of civilians, including Colvin and Ochlik, as well as British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier -- who were wounded in the attack -- and Syrian translator Wael Omar, as well as "other inhumane acts" committed against Bouvier.
One of Bouvier's lawyers, Matthieu Bagard, said the new probe "opens the door to treat a certain number of procedures against journalists in armed conflict zones as crimes against humanity".
His lawyer colleague, Marie Dose, called the shift in the investigation "a great step forwards for war reporters".
"The Colvin family calls on the new Syrian government to cooperate with international investigators to hold the perpetrators of atrocities like the murder of Marie Colvin accountable," Scott Gilmore, the lawyer for the journalist's sister Cathleen Colvin, told AFP.
Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for Ochlik's family, said she now expected judges to issue arrest warrants "for the high-ranking political and military officials whose involvement has been established".
In March 2012, France opened a probe for murder into the death of Ochlik and for attempted murder over the injury of Bouvier, both French nationals.
- 'Deliberately targeted' -
The probe was widened into potential war crimes in October 2014, and in 2016 non-French plaintiffs joined the legal action.
"This wasn't a case of us being in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Bouvier in 2013. "We were deliberately targeted."
In 2016, then-Syrian president Bashar al-Assad claimed that Colvin was "responsible" for her own death.
"It's a war and she came illegally to Syria," he said, accusing the reporter of working "with the terrorists".
The battle of Homs, Syria's third city, was part a civil war triggered by the repression of a 2011 revolt against Assad's government.
Colvin, who was 56 and working for the Sunday Times when she died, was known for her fearless reporting and signature black eye patch which she wore after losing sight in one eye in an explosion during Sri Lanka's civil war.
Assad was ousted in December after rebels led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group seized control of Damascus, ending more than 50 years of his family's iron-fisted rule.