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Torture and murder allegations: Attorney General charges Syrian doctor

2021-07-28T08:20:02.187Z


Alaa M. allegedly mistreated people and killed a prisoner in the Homs Military Hospital. According to SPIEGEL information, he worked for clinics in Göttingen and Bad Wildungen until his arrest.


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Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe

Photo: Christoph Schmidt / dpa

Attorney General Peter Frank is indicting a doctor from Syria on suspicion of crimes against humanity.

According to information from SPIEGEL, investigators from the Federal Prosecutor's Office accuse Alaa M. of murder and torture in 18 cases.

According to this, M. is said to have beaten and kicked prisoners in the military hospital in the Syrian city of Homs and in prison cells, doused wounds and genitals of alleged Syrian opposition members with alcohol and set fire to them, and killed an alleged opponent of the regime.

In addition, a prisoner of the regime is said to have died after an epileptic seizure and abuse and the administration of a drug by M.

The acts are said to have occurred between spring 2011 and the end of 2012.

In the meantime, M. is said to have worked in the notorious Mezzeh military hospital in Damascus, which is one of the worst torture prisons in Syria.

There, witnesses accuse him of mistreating prisoners.

Entered not as a refugee, but as a member of a desired professional group

After the crimes, M. traveled to Germany in 2015 - not as a refugee, but as a member of a desired professional group: he applied for a corresponding visa at the German embassy in Beirut.

After arriving in Germany, he worked in clinics in Göttingen and in the Hessian health resort Bad Wildungen until his arrest in June 2020.

A photo available to SPIEGEL from his Facebook account shows that he apparently qualified as a specialist in orthopedics in this country.

M. has denied the prosecutor general's allegations several times in the past.

Should the higher regional court in Frankfurt allow the prosecutor general to be charged, M. would be the third member of the regime of Syria's ruler Assad to be tried in Germany for crimes against humanity.

The former Assad secret service agent Anwar R. is currently on trial in Koblenz - he is said to have been responsible for the systematic torture and killing of prisoners in a unit of the Syrian secret service under his control.

The federal prosecutor's office accuses him of murdering 58 times and torturing more than 4,000 prisoners.

Another defendant at the same trial, Eyad A., was sentenced in February to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting torture and grave imprisonment.

However, his defense lawyer has announced that he will appeal.

Burdened by former colleagues

Alaa M's case differs from this in that it is the first time one of the regime's henchmen is said to have been tried in court, who allegedly tortured himself personally.

All other cases were on the level that the accused were responsible for this or were supposed to have been partly responsible.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office is considered to be in charge of the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of the war in Syria.

In Germany, on the one hand, members of terrorist militias such as the »Islamic State« are persecuted for this - as well as alleged perpetrators on the part of the regime.

In 2018, Germany was the first law enforcement agency in the world to advertise a leading member of the Assad regime internationally.

She obtained an arrest warrant for the former head of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Service, Jamil Hassan.

It is publicly unknown whether there are any further arrest warrants issued by Western investigators against leading members of the Assad regime - such as the former secret service coordinator Ali Mamlouk.

Alaa M. was noticed by the German authorities after former colleagues from the military hospital in Homs had initially incriminated him.

After the publication of joint research by the Qatari news broadcaster Al-Jazeera and SPIEGEL on allegations of torture by the relatives of victims, he was arrested in June 2020.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-07-28

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