BERLIN — A German court convicted a former Syrian regime intelligence officer for crimes against humanity on Thursday, part of the first trial in the world related to state-sponsored torture under President Bashar al-Assad, according to German media. He was sentenced to life in prison.
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Anwar Raslan, 58, was charged with crimes including 58 counts of murder, rape and torture in connection to his work as head of investigations at a branch of Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate during the country’s civil war.
The proceedings against Raslan began with a chance encounter at an asylum center in Berlin seven years ago, when Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer, recognized Raslan as the man who had detained him in Damascus.
German court convicts Syrian ex-intelligence officer in historic torture trial
The trial marked the first time Syrian victims had the chance to face perpetrators of crimes for Assad’s government during the country’s civil war. Victims who spoke in court as witnesses have described the case as a milestone, but a small step on the way to justice.
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Raslan was convicted of crimes that took place between April？29, 2011, and Sept.？7, 2012, when Syria was gripped by revolution. Prosecutors say his crimes happened “in the context of an extensive and systematic attack on the civilian population.” They argue that the unit Raslan headed at Branch 251 tortured at least 4,000 detainees during that period, using methods including beatings and electric shocks.
His co-defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, 44, a low-level officer, was sentenced to 4？ years in jail early last year.
Syrian activists living in Germany and abroad welcomed the verdict but also warned that atrocities continue in Syria. The German-Syrian human rights organization Adopt a Revolution demanded in a statement issued ahead of the verdict that the judgment should not be used as “a fig leaf for political inaction,” saying that the German government should enact a nationwide halt to deportations to Syria and make sure that Raslan’s superiors would not go unpunished.
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U.S.-based nonprofit group Human Rights Watch described the conviction as “a groundbreaking step toward justice for serious crimes in Syria” and called on other countries to follow Germany’s lead. Emphasizing the central role of Syrian survivors, lawyers, and activists in the trial, the organization lamented the challenges presented by witness protection and a lack translation of court proceedings into Arabic.
Steve Kostas, the senior legal adviser at the Open Society Justice Initiative, noted that while the trial was about events in the past, they continue to have relevance in Syria.
“It laid bare the systemic atrocities that continue to this day against innocent Syrians,” Kostas said in a statement. His organization represented in the trial five people who survived torture during detention and interrogation.
The trial took place under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which is enshrined in German law and allows for the overseas trials of those accused of committing grave acts such as genocide or war crimes.
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Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that some crimes are so serious that normal territorial restraints on prosecutions do not apply.
From the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidis to Syrian state-sponsored torture and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the German legal system is increasingly a place to seek justice for crimes committed far outside its borders.
According to a 2020 report, there are more than a dozen active cases related to crimes committed in Syria taking place in Germany.
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