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German court sentences former Syrian colonel to life in prison
Landmark ruling sees Anwar Raslan convicted for crimes against humanity in
Damascus jail a decade ago.
A German court has sentenced Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian colonel, to life
in prison for committing crimes against humanity at a jail in Damascus a
decade ago.
Thursday’s landmark ruling by the state court in Koblenz marks a first step
towards justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuse at the hands of
President Bashar al-Assad’s government during the years-long war.
“The prisoner was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, torture,
aggravated deprivation of liberty, rape and sexual assault,” the court in
Koblenz said in a press release.
It was the world’s first criminal case brought over state-led torture in
Syria, and Raslan, 58, is the highest-ranking former government official to
be tried for atrocities committed there.
Prosecutors had argued Raslan supervised the “systematic and brutal torture
” of more than 4,000 people at the Al-Khatib prison in the Syrian capital
between April 2011 and September 2012, resulting in the deaths of at least
58 people.
Raslan served under al-Assad as mass anti-government protests against his
rule were violently crushed.
He worked for 18 years in the Syrian secret services, where he rose through
the ranks to become head of the domestic intelligence “investigation”
service, according to a German investigator who testified at the opening of
the trial.
Prosecutors say he oversaw rape and sexual abuse, “electric shocks”,
beatings with “fists, wires and whips” and “sleep deprivation” at the
prison.
He sought refuge in Germany in 2014, after defecting from his post and
deserting Syria in 2012, and was arrested in 2019.
Raslan’s lawyers asked the Koblenz court last week to acquit their client,
claiming that he never personally tortured anybody.
Prosecutors secured the trial under Germany’s universal jurisdiction laws,
which allow courts to prosecute crimes against humanity committed anywhere
in the world.
‘Justice can and will prevail’
Campaigners welcomed the sentencing, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) calling
it a “long-awaited beacon of hope that justice can and will in the end
prevail”.
“Germany’s trial against Anwar Raslan is a message to the Syrian
authorities that no one is beyond the reach of justice,” Balkees Jarrah,
HRW’s associate international justice director, said in a statement.
“Other countries should follow Germany’s lead, and actively bolster
efforts to prosecute serious crimes in Syria,” he added.
Kristyan Benedict, a campaigns manager with Amnesty International, wrote on
Twitter: “The Koblenz torture trial is the first of its kind worldwide. It
won’t be the last.”
Eric Witte, a senior project manager with the Open Society Justice
Initiative, which supported several witnesses in the case, told Al Jazeera
that the verdict would bring a “measure of justice and solace … for some
victims of systematic torture in al-Assad’s Syria”.
“This trial validates … efforts to hold the most senior official to date
from the government of al-Assad to account for the torture of over 4,000
people,” he said.
Thursday’s ruling came almost a year after Eyad al-Gharib, a lower-ranking
officer, was convicted by the Koblenz court of accessory to crimes against
humanity.
He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Like Raslan, he also arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker and was arrested
in 2019.
Other such cases have also sprung up in Germany, France and Sweden, as
Syrian victims who have sought refuge in Europe turn to the only legal means
currently available to them.
In another prominent case in Germany, the trial of a former Syrian doctor
charged with crimes against humanity is due to open next week. |
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