Pierre Avril, correspondent in Berlin
Arriving on German territory in 2014, as a simple anonymous refugee fleeing the war, Anwar Raslan thought he could draw a line from his past as a colonel in the Syrian intelligence services.
Thursday, January 13, the 58-year-old man, a former pillar of the repression system of the regime of Bashar El Assad, was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity by a court in Koblenz.
In this case, German justice replaced the International Criminal Court, escaping a probable veto by Russia at the UN Security Council, an ally of Damascus.
“For the first time, a high-ranking member of the Syrian regime has been convicted of crimes against humanity,” said
Patrick Kroker, lawyer for the European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights (ECCHR), who assisted 14 civil parties. It is a
“historic”
verdict
, added the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kennet Roth.
Anwar Raslan was accused of complicity in the homicide of 27 people, acts of torture and sexual violence inflicted on nearly 4,000 people imprisoned, between April 2011 and September 2012, in a detention center in the Syrian capital: the sinister section from Al-Khatib.
"In addition to punches, sticks, pipes, cables and whips, electric shocks were administered"
, detailed the indictment, adding:
"The prisoners were suspended from the ceiling by the wrists of such. so that their toes touched the ground and were struck again in that position. ”.
Other trials to come
One of the henchmen of the Syrian officer, Eyad al-Gharib, 43, also an official of the General Directorate of Intelligence, had already been sentenced in February 2021 by the same court in Koblenz, in the west of the country, to a sentence four and a half years in prison. From his cell, the latter had written a letter of contrition intended for the victims. The two fugitives had arrived separately in Germany where they were arrested in 2019 following previous complaints filed by seven Syrian victims also refugees across the Rhine. Then their two trials were separated.
These did not go smoothly. For fear of reprisals against their relatives who remained in Syria, witnesses were unable to repeat during the public hearing the content of certain depositions taken previously on record. But by its severity the verdict could inspire other courts in Europe intended to do justice to crimes perpetrated in Syria.
"It shows that justice must not remain a dream and we have a long way to go - but for us it is a first step towards freedom, dignity and justice",
welcomed Ruham Hawash, a survivor of the Al-Khatib section.
Another complaint from Syrian refugees in Germany targets Jamil Hassan, a relative of President Assad and former Air Force intelligence chief who is already the subject of an international arrest warrant from Germany and the United Kingdom. France.
In addition, on January 19, in Frankfurt, the trial of a former Syrian doctor from a military prison in Homs, accused of torture, will begin.
In France, following a complaint from victims who had taken refuge in France, an investigating judge issued arrest warrants in November 2018 against three senior officials of the Assad regime.
Complaints have also been filed in Austria, Norway and Sweden, which in 2017 was the first country to convict a former regime soldier for a war crime.