France has issued international arrest warrants for three senior Syrian intelligence officials in connection with the deaths of two Franco-Syrian nationals, AFP reported Monday (November 5th).

The warrants, which target National Security Bureau director Ali Mamluk and two others, were issued for "complicity in acts of torture", "complicity in crimes against humanity" and "complicity in war crimes", legal sources said.

The warrants were issued October 8th, but made public only on Monday, according to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The other high-ranking officials are Jamil Hassan, head of the Syrian air force's intelligence agency, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, in charge of the air force intelligence's investigative branch at the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus.

They are wanted in connection with the disappearance of Mazen and Patrick Dabbagh, a father and son, who were arrested in November 2013 and who went missing after being detained in the Mezzeh detention centre, the FIDH said.

They were officially declared dead this summer.

In June, German prosecutors also issued an international arrest warrant for Jamil Hassan on charges he oversaw the torture and murder of hundreds of detainees.

In both Germany and France, investigations have touched on evidence provided by "Caesar", a former Syrian police photographer who fled his country in 2013 taking 55,000 photographs of tortured detainees with him, legal sources said in France.

Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer and co-ordinator for the FIDH, said Monday that the latest warrants "demonstrate that the wall of impunity surrounding Syrian officials at the highest level can indeed be broken".

"This is an unprecedented step towards justice for the Dabbagh family and towards recognition -- by independent judges -- of the atrocities perpetrated against detainees by the Syrian regime," she and Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for the family, said in a statement.