{"id":13022,"date":"2022-01-13T06:48:15","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T14:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13022"},"modified":"2022-01-13T06:48:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T14:48:15","slug":"german-court-finds-syrian-ex-colonel-guilty-of-crimes-against-humanity-deutsche-welle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13022","title":{"rendered":"“German court finds Syrian ex-colonel guilty of crimes against humanity”, Deutsche Welle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonn, 13.01.2022<\/p>\n

A German court has found a Syrian former army colonel guilty of crimes against humanity, handing him a life sentence. It was the first-ever trial worldwide to examine state-sponsored torture during the Syrian civil war.<\/em><\/p>\n

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German court sentences Syrian officer to life in prison<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A court in Germany<\/a> found a\u00a0Syrian former colonel guilty on charges of state torture on Thursday\u00a0and sentenced\u00a0him to\u00a0life in prison.<\/p>\n

Anwar Raslan\u00a0was found guilty of overseeing the murder of 27 people at the Al-Khatib detention center\u00a0in Damascus.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0prosecution of Raslan<\/a> has taken place under the principle of universal jurisdiction, allowing the prosecution of possible war crimes committed by foreigners in other states.<\/p>\n

The trial in the higher regional court in Koblenz in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate is a world first, connecting alleged\u00a0crimes against humanity<\/a> with the Syrian state itself.<\/p>\n

What was Raslan\u00a0accused of?<\/h2>\n

The 58-year-old former colonel had denied committing torture<\/a> or giving instructions for others to commit torture.<\/p>\n

The crimes against humanity were alleged to have taken place in 2011 and 2012 \u2014\u00a0during the early stages of the Syrian Civil War.<\/p>\n

Raslan\u00a0was allegedly responsible for the torture of at least 4,000 people in a General Intelligence Service prison in the capital, Damascus.<\/p>\n

The defendant was accused of\u00a0supervising interrogations including “electric shocks,” beatings with “fists, wires and whips,”\u00a0rape and sexual abuse, and sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Raslan\u00a0had assigned the interrogators and prison guards to duty in the notorious prison and determined their work procedures. He had also known about the extent of the torture. The mistreatment had served to coerce confessions and obtain information, the prosecution said.<\/p>\n

Raslan’s\u00a0lawyers last week\u00a0called on the court to acquit their client, claiming that he never personally tortured anybody, and had\u00a0defected in late 2012.<\/p>\n

Rights groups welcome verdict<\/h2>\n

The trial could set a precedent for future proceedings against Syrian officials who committed crimes during the civil war.<\/p>\n

“Despite all the shortcomings of international criminal justice, Anwar Raslan’s conviction shows what the principle of universal jurisdiction can achieve and that such trials are in fact feasible in Germany and Europe,” said Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the independent rights group the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth hailed the verdict. “This is really historic,” Roth told reporters in Geneva.<\/p>\n

Roth said HRW had helped provide some of the evidence in the trial, maintaining that “the torture and murder in custody…\u00a0was a key part of the modus operandi of the Assad government.”<\/p>\n

Demand for life sentence<\/h2>\n

The prosecution had demanded life imprisonment, asking the court to rule out any release within the first 15 years because of the severity of the crimes.<\/p>\n

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Germany: Syrian torture on trial<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The trial got underway in April 2020, with two defendants in the dock.<\/p>\n

The younger of the two, a Syrian man identified as Eyad A., was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in February last year for aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.<\/p>\n

He was found guilty of helping to bring 30 anti-government demonstrators to the al-Khatib torture prison.<\/p>\n

Both men \u2014 who are considered as belonging to Bashar Assad’s regime<\/a> \u2014 were arrested in Germany in 2019 after fleeing Syria.<\/p>\n

At the UN Security Council, Russia and China have vetoed attempts by Western powers to refer the Syrian crisis to the International Criminal Court. The result is that\u00a0survivors of torture and chemical weapons attacks have been left with limited options to seek justice.<\/p>\n

rc\/fb (AFP, dpa, Reuters, AP, KNA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bonn, 13.01.2022 A German court has found a Syrian former army colonel guilty of crimes against humanity, handing him a life sentence. It was the first-ever trial worldwide to examine state-sponsored torture during the Syrian civil war. German court sentences Syrian officer to life in prison A court in Germany found a\u00a0Syrian former colonel guilty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13023,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022\/revisions\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}