In a landmark verdict in Germany, a former Syrian secret police officer was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of crimes against humanity, the first trial of its kind in the world related to abuses by the Bashar al regime. -Assad.
Anwar Raslan, 58, a former colonel who defected 10 years ago, was implicated in the murder of dozens of people and the torture of thousands in a detention center near Damascus.
The Koblenz court ruling is a first step towards justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuses at the hands of the Syrian government.
Meanwhile, another trial related to the Syrian regime, that of a doctor who sought refuge in Germany, will begin in Frankfurt.
Almost 11 years after the start of the popular uprising in Syria, the Koblenz trial was the first time that a court examined crimes attributed to the Syrian regime and documented countless times by Syrian activists and NGOs.
In a previous verdict as part of the same trial, a second defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, was convicted last February, he was an accessory to crimes against humanity and sentenced by the Koblenz state court to four and a half years in prison.
The court concluded that al-Gharib was part of a unit that detained the anti-government protesters and took them to a facility in the Syrian city of Douma known as Al Khatib, or Rama 251, where they were tortured.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Raslan was the senior officer in charge of the jail and oversaw the “brutal and systematic torture” of more than 4,000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012, which resulted in the deaths of at least 58 people.
The court heard evidence implicating Raslan in 30 of those deaths. A key piece of the evidence against him were photographs of alleged torture victims smuggled out of Syria by a former police officer, calling himself Caesar.
More than 80 witnesses gave testimony, including 12 deserters and numerous victims who exposed the mistreatment of prisoners tied up in unsanitary conditions in the secret detention center, including treatment with electric shocks, whipping and beatings.
Some witnesses refused to testify, while others disguised themselves for fear of reprisals against their relatives who are still in Syria.
Anwar Raslan’s lawyers asked the court last week to acquit their client, claiming that he never personally tortured anyone and that he defected in late 2012.
In custody for the past three years, Raslan never tried to cover up his past when he sought refuge in Berlin with his family in 2014. Seeking police protection in Germany in February of the following year, he described his experience to officers.
Some 800,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Germany since the beginning of the war, including Raslan and al-Gharib, who were arrested in 2019.
With Russia and China using their vetoes to block attempts by the UN Security Council to bring Syria to the International Criminal Court, countries like Germany that apply the principle of universal jurisdiction for serious crimes will increasingly become host to such. trials, according to Patrick Kroker. , a lawyer from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights who represented several survivors at the trial.
Speaking this week before the verdict, one of those who testified against Raslan said that whatever the outcome, the court proceedings in Germany would send an important message that those responsible for crimes in Syria can be held accountable.
“As Syrians who suffered greatly, especially after the start of the revolution, (the trials show) those sufferings are not in vain,” said Wassim Mukdad, a torture survivor and co-plaintiff who, like the accused, now lives in Germany. .
Mukdad was among dozens of witnesses who testified against Raslan and al-Gharib.
Conservative estimates put the number of those forcibly detained or disappeared in Syria at 149,000, more than 85% of them at the hands of the Syrian government, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Most disappeared or were arrested shortly after peaceful protests broke out in March 2011 against the Assad government, which responded to the demonstrations with brutal repression.
The Syrian government denies holding political prisoners and labels its opponents as terrorists.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism