This Is How the First Trial Related to the Atrocities of the Assad Regime Against Syrian Detainees Ended

On January 13, 2022, the German judiciary issued a life sentence against a former intelligence officer in the Syrian regime. This is the world's first trial of torture by the regime of Bashar al-Assad against Syrian detainees.

After years of complaints from Syrians who survived the slaughterhouses of the Assad regime, the continued absence of transitional justice, and the attempt to dilute the stories of hundreds of thousands of victims; it seems that a glimmer of light has recently begun to revive the hopes of the victims of torture and their families, to bring their cases before European courts to prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against them.

According to observers, mass human rights violations do not go unpunished, no matter how long it takes, and history is to witness that.

Will the trial of Colonel Anwar Raslan in Germany be the beginning of achieving justice for victims of torture in Syria?

Landmark Trial

On January 13, the Regional High Court in Koblenz (western Germany) ruled that Syrian Colonel Anwar Raslan (58 years) was responsible for the killing of detainees and the torture of thousands of others in the State Security branch known as al-Khatib Branch in Damascus, during the period between 2011 and 2012.

It accused Raslan of overseeing the murder of 58 people and torture of 4,000 others and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

This trial, which was divided into two parts, resulted in the issuance of a first verdict, on February 24, 2021, convicting the accused, Iyad al-Gharib (35 years), who was working as a non-commissioned officer in the State Security Branch before he defected and fled to Germany four and a half years ago.

He was charged with complicity and facilitating the perpetration of crimes of torture for more than 30 detainees.

It is reported that in February 2020, the German and French police arrested the two former intelligence officers, Anwar Raslan and Iyad al-Gharib.

Anwar Raslan, who headed the Investigations Division in Branch 251 of the State Security Service in the Syrian regime before his defection, remained silent throughout the sessions of this trial, which began on April 23, 2020.

However, Anwar Raslan wrote a closing plea, which was read in the courtroom two days before the sentence, in which he explained in detail his role since the start of the demonstrations in 2011 until his defection, describing his inability to do anything to oppose the method of work that was followed in the security branch in which he was serving.

In his plea, Raslan literally said: “This is my message to the whole Syrian people. I'm so sorry I couldn't help you more! I couldn't stop the killing machine.”

It is noteworthy that life imprisonment is the second maximum penalty in German law and comes after aggravated life imprisonment. However, the convict has the right to apply for release after 15 years, and the prison authorities have the right to assess the case based on his health and his behavior.

In turn, researcher on Syrian affairs Mohammed Elsukkeri said in a statement to Al-Estiklal: “The guillotine of the French Revolution executed even the cook of Louis XVI, although the man was not a participant in the massacres of the Bastille. It did not differentiate between the type or status of people in that regime and the size of the massacres that were committed. The lesson was the tacit support of everyone working the Louis regime.

“This model applies to Anwar Raslan. It is a step in the right direction, to emphasize that the regime is criminal with all its cadres, and this is an important point because it establishes the criminality of the regime legally for the first time,” he adds.

Elsukkeri continues by saying: “He who kills a human being is like someone who kills a thousand and who kills a million. Although Raslan is a dissident, this should not intercede for him, out of the dignity of our friends who fell at his hands, we do not want revenge on him, but rather we want justice, and his defection was not for our sake, but for him before himself and to record a position for history.

“Undoubtedly, activating the process of accountability is what the Syrian regime fears the most, the regime may escape from everything except this path, because there are international resolutions that point, even indirectly, to the regime’s involvement in war crimes,” he notes.

“Accountability is an essential part of the conditions for achieving transitional justice in Syria, but there is a fear that this selective justice will be incomplete, as happened in Eastern European countries when the Soviet Union collapsed,” Elsukkeri pointed out.

Justice or Selectivity?

The decision of the Koblenz Court to life imprisonment for the former colonel in the intelligence of the Assad regime, Anwar Raslan, was once welcomed and once denounced by different Syrian activists and human rights organizations.

Some see it as a first step on the road to justice for the Syrians, but others see that the balance of justice had changed its settings and targeted people who defected from the Assad regime.

Syrian activists and lawyers said that the conviction of Colonel Anwar Raslan strengthens the ability of European courts to pursue similar cases and it sends a message to war criminals around the world that they may one day face consequences, according to The New York Times.

In this regard, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Michelle Bachelet, welcomed the German court's decision against Raslan.

It described the decision as historic and draws attention once again to the forms of torture and inhumane and reprehensible treatment that many Syrians are subjected to in the prisons of the Assad regime.

Amnesty International also described the German court's decision as a historic victory for Syrian activists and human rights groups who have relentlessly sought accountability and justice.

In turn, Syrian lawyer and political writer Zaid al-Azem said in a statement to Al-Estiklal that: “The Koblenz trial is a step on the path to achieving justice for the Syrian detainees, and an accusatory reference to all the Assad regime’s branches that killed Syrians, and a glimmer of hope for the victims.

“There are those who say that why are people who are forced to carry out instructions to be held accountable before the major criminals of the Syrian regime are held accountable? But there are victims who were tortured by these people before they defected, and cases were brought against them in Germany—the place of residence of the torturer and the victim,” he adds.

“As a result, the German judiciary was forced to sentence these people for their violations against those they claimed, as it is not bound by our demographic, philosophical and political calculations as Syrians, and to postpone the trial of people proven guilty until Bashar al-Assad is tried,” he continues.

“The criminalization of Anwar Raslan means the criminalization of the Assad regime’s security institution, and based on it, any Syrian officer or intelligence branch will be criminalized, which will push European countries to criminalize other people involved in supporting the Assad regime or working within its institutions,” lawyer Zaid al-Azem confirms.

From a different point of view, Syrian journalist and writer Aqil Hussein sees in a statement to Al-Estiklal that “the language of cursing and gloating was clear in the reactions of most of the court’s supporters, and this confirms the vengeful dimension to it in the first place.

“No one can oppose the trial or accountability of any criminal in the Assad regime, but the problem is that what happened is that the defendants were tried not for personal crimes they were convicted of and proven to have committed, but for the crimes of the branch in which they were working, and even for the crimes of the entire regime, only considering that they were part of this regime,” he added.

“What happened, in my opinion, is the targeting of all dissidents from the regime’s institutions, and that a dangerous message was sent by the institutions that prepared the prosecution file and their supporters, saying: Dissidents, you will be a target because of your previous work in the regime's institutions, if we are unable to hold the regime accountable, we must achieve some success, which saves our face and shows that we are doing useful work,” Hussein points out.

“The path of justice can only be reached by achieving a political transition, as long as the Assad regime is in control, there will be no transitional justice and no accountability for criminals, and herein lies the danger of this type of trial. Therefore, we stood against it and refused any trial of any dissident before it was possible to reach the officers, leaders and symbols of the regime to the same degree,” the journalist notes.

He continues by saying: “We all know that the Sunni officer has no value or importance, is not a decision-maker or has any consideration, and that he is not responsible for anything important in any of the regime's security or military institutions, whatever his rank.”

“Anwar Raslan did not volunteer in the intelligence services, and this is in response to those who say that just because he chose the intelligence services, he is a criminal. Rather, he is a police officer that the Assad regime decided in 2009 to transfer to al-Khatib branch, and this is what no employee can object to,” Hussein points out.

Chasing Criminals in Europe

The horrific footage of about 11,000 victims who died under torture, which Caesar, the Syrian military police photographer, leaked out of the country, prompted several European courts to adopt the investigation of war-crimes and crimes-against-humanity cases within the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of the perpetrators of serious crimes, regardless of their nationality or the place where the crimes were committed.

Over the past years, in Germany, which received nearly 800,000 Syrian asylum seekers, the judicial complaints of Syrians who confirmed that they had been tortured in the prisons of the Assad regime doubled.

In June 2020, 7 Syrians who were subjected to torture or who witnessed rape and sexual assaults in Assad regime detention centers filed judicial complaints against 9 senior officials of the Syrian government and the Air Force Intelligence branch.

At the end of July 2021, the German judiciary charged a former Syrian doctor in Homs Military Prison with committing humanitarian crimes for his involvement in torturing detainees, and his trial will begin in Frankfurt next week.

It is noteworthy that Germany is currently looking into more than 12 cases related to crimes committed in Syria, according to a report issued last year by the Human Rights Organization.

In France, in November 2018, a French investigative judge issued international warrants for 3 senior Syrian regime officials on suspicion of involvement in the circumstances of the disappearance of two Syrians with French citizenship in Syria in 2013.

Complaints were also lodged in Austria, Norway and Sweden, which in 2017, became the first country to indict a former member of Assad's forces for war crimes in Syria.

It is noteworthy that the Syrian regime has not signed the agreement establishing the International Criminal Court.