Syrian colonel sentenced to life in Germany for torturing and killing detainees

The Koblenz court in Germany has sentenced a colonel of the Syrian secret services, who is involved in the mass torture and murder of detainees in the fight against the opposition. Defendant Anwar Raslan received a life sentence without the right to parole, writes Der Tagesspiegel. This is the first time such a harsh sentence has been handed down in a torture case involving security forces subordinate to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Raslan was the head of the investigative department at the State Security Detention Center in Damascus, known as Section 251. As the court established, the officer was involved in 4,000 cases of torture, 27 murders and two rapes of detainees.

Raslan’s subordinate, Eyad al-Gharib, was convicted in February 2021 of aiding and abetting torture and imprisonment, which is qualified as a crime against humanity. Al-Gharib is serving a sentence of 4.5 years in prison, transmits CNN.

Raslan is the highest-ranking Assad security official to have been prosecuted for systematic torture, extrajudicial executions and sexual assault. In 2012, he deserted and fled Syria. Two years later, Raslan was identified in Berlin by one of the Syrian refugees, who recognized his tormentor. Raslan himself denies involvement in the crimes.

About 100 people testified against the colonel. Some of them testified in court personally. According to the stories of the surviving prisoners of the Damascus prison, they were kept in inhuman conditions, deprived of food, water and medical care. One woman said that she was stripped naked before being interrogated.

Syrian musician Wassim Muqdad, who lives in Berlin, said he was beaten on the heels, feet and knees during interrogation. “They knew exactly how to inflict the worst pain,” Muqdad added, speaking of his tormentors.

The detainees were also tortured with electricity.

Raslan’s verdict came against the background of the desire of the Syrian authorities to restore relations with other countries and weaken international isolation. Assad is accused of killing hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens, including with the use of chemical weapons. However, diplomatic relations with Damascus are already being restored by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the UN, about 100,000 people were detained, abducted or missing in Syria.

The civil war in Syria began in the spring of 2011, when various opposition forces opposed the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In subsequent years, the so-called “document hunters”, risking their lives, took hundreds of thousands of reports, reports and other papers from Syria, testifying to the massacres of detainees. These documents were found on the territory of the prisons after they were abandoned by the guards and were no longer used.

In 2013, a defector from the Syrian security forces, codenamed Caesar, smuggled out of the country tens of thousands of photographs of prisoners allegedly tortured to death in prisons. These images were also attached to Raslan’s case.

The search for the prisoners involved in the torture continues. In July 2021, German prosecutors filed charges against a doctor, Alaa Musa, who worked in the Syrian prison system. He is suspected of bullying detainees. Musa burned the genitals of at least one of them.

At the same time, it is generally not possible to hold the Syrian authorities accountable for the crimes committed, since Syria is not a party to the International Criminal Court. A special decision of the UN Security Council could change the situation, but the initiative was blocked by Russia and China.