Syrian ex-secret police officer given life jail term after landmark German trial
In a landmark verdict in Germany, a former Syrian secret police officer has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of crimes against humanity, the first such process in the world linked to abuses committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime.
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 centre near Damascus.
The ruling by the court in Koblenz is a first step toward justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuse at the hands of the Syrian government.
Meanwhile, another trial linked to the Syrian regime — that of a doctor who sought refuge in Germany — is due to begin in Frankfurt.
Nearly 11 years after the start of the popular uprising in Syria, the Koblenz trial has been the first time that a court has examined the crimes attributed to the Syrian regime and documented countless times by Syrian activists and NGOs.
In an earlier verdict as part of the same trial, a second defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, was convicted last February of 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 which detained anti-government protests and took them to a facility in the Syrian city of Douma known as Al Khatib, or Branch 251, where they were tortured.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Raslan was the senior officer in charge of the jail and supervised the “systematic and brutal torture” of more than 4,000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012, resulting in the deaths of at least 58 people.
The court heard evidence implicating Raslan in 30 of those deaths. A key part of the evidence against him were the
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