FIDH and LDH today filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor at the Paris Court to urge the French judiciary to investigate the involvement of French companies, especially Qosmos, in supplying the Bachar El Assad regime with surveillance equipment.
Qosmos, a company specialised in supplying Deep Packet Inspection, material designed for real time analysis of digital data that transit over the network, has been called into question several times by several difference sources, for contributing to supplying the Syrian region with the electronic surveillance equipment needed to quell the opposition that has been going on in Syria since March 2011.
“At a time when the French authorities are strongly criticising Bachar El Assad’s violence against the Syrian people, it is vital that full information be made available on the involvement of French companies in supplying surveillance equipment to the Syrian regime”, since Patrick Baudouin, FIDH Honorary President.
“Western companies must know that they cannot sell this type of equipment to authoritarian regimes without being held accountable, and without worrying about what happens when these regimes use this material”, said Michel Tubiana, LDH Honorary President.
The repression orchestrated by the Syrian regime for the last 16 months against its own people has led to at least 16,000 deaths, mainly civilians, and the arbitrary detention of tens of thousands of people and a large number of forced disappearances. People are systematically tortured in the detention centres. Victims of repression include human rights defenders, activists, including cyber-activists who have been singled out because of their efforts to communicate and denounce human rights violations. The regime’s tight hand over the communications tools used by the population and the activists seems to have contributed extensively to exposing these people to the repression they have been and still are suffering.