THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — A Dutch court on Friday found a Syrian asylum-seeker guilty of committing war crimes in Syria and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
The District Court of The Hague found that Ahmad al Khedr had participated in the execution of a Syrian government official in 2012, a killing that was captured on video.
“The court places extra weight on the special circumstances that the execution took place in a country where a non-international armed conflict was occurring,” Presiding Judge Jan van Steen said in court Friday.
Al Khedr was prosecuted under the Netherlands’ universal jurisdiction law, which gives Dutch authorities the right to pursue charges against people who commit genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, regardless of where in the world the crimes take place.
Several videos of the shooting were shown to the court over a series of hearings held in June. In them, a man identified as Lieutenant Colonel Qussai Mahmoud al Ali is seen handcuffed and bruised. He’s marched to the Euphrates River, where he begs for his life and offers money to his captures to be spared. Al Khedr then fires a bullet past the man’s head and another man begins shooting with an assault rifle.
According to an investigation by Dutch experts, there were 26 shots in total and al Khedr fired his revolver six times. He denied the allegations, saying he only fired three times and intentionally missed in an effort to spare the man’s life.
The 49-year-old defendant had served in the Syrian army for 20 years before deserting at the outbreak of the civil war. He proceeded to join a series of organizations opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The prosecution also alleged al Khedr was a member of the terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra, but the court wasn’t convinced.
“Although there are strong indications, it cannot be established beyond a reasonable doubt,” van Steen said.
The case against al Khedr is one of several brought against Syrians who have applied for asylum in the Netherlands. He had settled with his family in the small Dutch town of Kapelle before his crimes in Syria were discovered.
“The idea was to prosecute ISIS fighters,” said Thijs Bouwknegt, a researcher at the Amsterdam-based NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. “But there aren’t so many of them in the Netherlands. Instead, prosecutions have mostly focused on opposition fighters.”
Al Khedr’s crimes were discovered during a German investigation into Syrian refugees accused of war crimes. German authorities tipped off the Dutch.
“With the videos, it was a pretty clear cut case,” Bouwknegt said in an interview.
Prosecutors had asked for 27 years, but the judges ultimately decided on 20. It's unclear whether al Khedr, who has been in police custody since his 2019 arrest, plans to appeal.
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