Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Syrian State Torture Trial Opens in Germany

Two former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany on Thursday accused of crimes against humanity in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

KOBLENZ, Germany (AFP) — Two former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany on Thursday accused of crimes against humanity in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Prime suspect Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Syrian state security, is accused of carrying out crimes against humanity while in charge of al-Khatib detention center in Damascus. 

The 57-year-old, who appeared in the dock wearing glasses and a moustache, is charged with overseeing the murder of 58 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the prison between April 29, 2011 and Sept. 7, 2012. 

Fellow defendant Eyad al-Gharib, 43, is accused of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity, having helped to arrest protesters and deliver them to al-Khatib in the autumn of 2011. He appeared in court in a grey hooded jacket, his face partially covered by a mask. 

Like hundreds of thousands of other Syrians, the two men fled their country and applied for asylum in Germany, where they were arrested in February 2019. 

"This trial is the first occasion on which (victims) are speaking out — not only in public, but before a court — about what happened to them and what is still happening in Syria," said Wolfgang Kaleck, founder of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a Berlin-based legal group supporting the plaintiffs.

Raslan and Gharib are being tried on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity.

It’s the only way to bring the perpetrators of Syrian state crimes to justice, as the International Criminal Court is hamstrung by vetoes from Russia and China, the ECCHR said. 

Amnesty International called on other states "to follow Germany’s steps in initiating similar proceedings."

"The case in Koblenz should serve as a stark warning to those who are currently committing abuses in Syria that no one is beyond the reach of justice," Human Rights Watch said in a statement. 

During the trial, due to last until at least August, the court is expected to hear testimony from victims who survived imprisonment at al-Khatib before escaping to Europe.

Reading from the charge sheet Thursday, state prosecutor Jasper Klinge said conditions at the prison were inhumane.

Inmates, many of whom were arrested for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations during the Arab Spring in 2011, were beaten with "fists, wires and whips" and subjected to electric shocks, prosecutors said.

Others were "hung by their wrists so that only the tips of their toes were touching the ground" and "continued to be beaten in this position" and/or "deprived of sleep for several days."

Such "brutal acts of psychological and physical abuse" were intended to extract "confessions and information about the (Syrian) opposition," the charge sheet said.

Some have suggested that Raslan was not just a pawn of the regime, noting that he reportedly defected to the opposition in 2012 before arriving in Germany two years later

Yet ECCHR's Kaleck insists that he was not "any old prison guard," but someone who, according to prosecutors, had a position of authority in the apparatus of the Syrian state.

If convicted, Raslan faces life imprisonment. 

Raslan and Gharib's lawyers declined comment.

Assad himself, however, defended Raslan against the accusations when he was asked about the trial in an interview with Kremlin-backed Russian broadcaster RT.

"We never believed that torture could make the situation better as a state, very simple. So we don't use it," said Assad, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for 20 years.

That statement beggars belief.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, at least 60,000 people have been killed under torture or as a result of the terrible conditions in Assad's detention centers.

© Agence France-Presse

Categories / Criminal, International, Trials

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...