Defendant Anwar Raslan (right) and others take part in his trial at the Higher Court in Koblenz, Germany, at the start of his trial last month. Raslan was put on trial in April 2020 in a landmark case in Germany.
Thomas Frey / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
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Thomas Frey / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Defendant Anwar Raslan (right) and others take part in his trial at the Higher Court in Koblenz, Germany, at the start of his trial last month. Raslan was put on trial in April 2020 in a landmark case in Germany.
Thomas Frey / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
KOBLENZ, Germany – The world’s first criminal trial for torture in Syrian prisons ended on Thursday with a guilty verdict and life sentence for a former Syrian intelligence officer.
The verdict came in the German case of Anwar Raslan, who has been charged with more than 30 counts of murder, 4,000 counts of torture and sexual assault since he oversees a notorious prison in Damascus in 2011 and 2012.
The landmark trial marks the first time a former senior Syrian official has faced Syrians in public in a war crimes case.
Witnesses and lawyers working on their behalf see this as a rare success in prosecuting a war crimes case in which crimes were committed under a government that remains in power – the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“This is the first step in a long way toward achieving justice,” said Wassim Mukdad, a Syrian torture survivor and co-plaintiff now living in Germany. “Experience the verdict against a former colonel in the intelligence force, history is being written before our eyes.”
In more than 100 trials between April 2020 and this month, five federal judges heard more than 100 witnesses, including 50 survivors of torture, to review state-sanctioned torture cases. Assad’s aid in Syria. German authorities arrested Raslan, now 58, in February 2019, four years after he defected from the Syrian government and fled to Germany.
German prosecutors have prosecuted the criminal case under the principle of general jurisdiction, which means that a country can prosecute crimes against humanity committed elsewhere.
The trial is a blueprint for future war crimes prosecutions
Mukdad testified in August 2020, months after the trial began. He also issued a statement in the closing days of the trial about the atrocities committed in Syria.
According to him, the ruling sends a message of responsibility to the Syrian regime after more than 100,000 people went missing and thousands were systematically tortured, which accelerated in 2011 after a popular uprising. against this regime started with the war in Syria.
“We feel that we have achieved something. Our pain and our suffering are not in vain,” said Mukdad.
Nuran al-Ghamain, one of the few women who survived the torture to testify, said she collapsed in court after meeting Raslan for the first time since 2012, when she was released from prison in Damascus.
“It was hard for me,” she recounts of her day in court, but her testimony was a relief, she said. In a statement later this month, she praised German judges for adding sexual violence to crimes against humanity.
Patrick Kroker, senior legal adviser at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, said the trial was a blueprint for future prosecutions. Kroker represents a number of Syrians who survived the torture.
The testimony of Syrian witnesses was key to the case, he said, and the bravery they showed was “very, very inspiring and a very powerful moment.” Survivors of the torture relayed their remarks to the German judges, but mainly aimed them at the defendant, who appeared clearly displeased, according to people in the courtroom.
Raslan said the torture took place in Syria, but denied personally participating in it. The Assad regime has always denied that torture is practiced in prisons in Syria, despite evidence to the contrary.
Some Syrian exiles criticized the trial
Despite Thursday’s ruling, not everyone in Germany’s powerful 800,000 Syrian community is happy with the trial. Raslan is too low-level, some complain – and officials serving the Assad regime are still free. The trial was held far from where most of the Syrian community lives in Berlin, inaccessible to most of the community. The court did not provide a transcript of the proceedings.
The judges rejected the request to allow the recording of the trial and were ordered by another court – following a lawsuit by Arabic-speaking journalists and human rights groups – to provide an Arabic translation of the process. proceedings in German. There is no witness protection, even when the Assad regime is threatening the families of witnesses back home.
In a closing statement, attorney Anna Oehmichen, who represents the four Syrian plaintiffs, praised the judges for their objectivity. But she also criticized the court for “not informing the people who were really affected,” referring to the Syrian diaspora in Germany as well as those who remained in Syria.
Oehmichen warned that ”the information vacuum creates the ideal conditions for misunderstandings” which could erode the confidence of the Syrian exile community in the German legal system. for Syrian regime officials. , who can change their own version of the outcome of the trial.
Germany’s decision to hold the trial comes at a time when international courts are politically blocked by China and Russia, allies of the Damascus regime, at the United Nations. Germany was the first country to bring charges in a national court. There are now multiple pending cases against Syrian officials and loyalists across Europe.
Ideally this case should be heard in Syria, said ECCHR Secretary General Wolfgang Kaleck, but that is not possible.
“Those who criticized the Koblenz trial, fair enough,” Kaleck said. “Decision [to hold a trial in Germany] nothing or this. And, you know, it’s a promising start with a lot to come. “
