What Are the Implications of Holding Accountable Those Involved in Killing Syrians in German Courts?

Germany succeeded in confirming the saying “justice will prevail” after one of its courts sentenced to death a soldier who committed war crimes against humanity in Syria and chose to settle in Germany years after.

German authorities tended to arrest officers and doctors affiliated with the Bashar al-Assad regime and prosecute them after they sought refuge. Their arrest was based on eyewitnesses that could remember and document their crimes in Syria during the years of the regime’s suppression of the revolution of March 2011.

Some European courts try these defendants, according to what is known as “universal jurisdiction,” authorizing the court to prosecute defendants even if they did not commit the crimes in the European country in which they currently reside.

 

‘The Butcher of Yarmouk’

In a brave decision, the Regional Court in the German capital, Berlin, on February 23, 2023, sentenced the Palestinian–Syrian, Mowaffaq Dawah, to life imprisonment, for committing war crimes against humanity in Syria in 2014.

Dawah was charged with firing a rocket-propelled grenade at Palestinian civilians while they were gathering to receive humanitarian aid inside the Yarmouk camp, south of the capital, Damascus, during the siege in March 2014, which resulted in the death and injury of a number of them.

At the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Dawah joined the popular committees affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), which supported Assad’s forces in the war against the Syrians.

The German police managed to arrest Mowaffaq Dawah in August 2021 and charged him with committing crimes of arrest, torture, and sexual violence against civilians at the checkpoint he headed in the Yarmouk camp in Damascus.

The verdict came after a complaint was submitted to the German authorities by Dawah victims in the Yarmouk camp after he caused the arrest of the son of a woman residing in Jordan from the camp checkpoint.

The indictment was based on the evidence and testimonies of the alleged victims and witnesses collected by the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research (SCLSR) and with significant support from the European Center for Constitution and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The accused was a member of the Popular Front – General Command militia, led by Ahmed Jibril, and later in the Free Palestine militia, led by Yasser Qashlaq, affiliated with the Syrian regime.

The decision confirmed that he had participated, since the beginning of the popular demonstrations and protests in Yarmouk camp, by suppressing the demonstrations and beating and arresting peaceful protesters.

After that, Dawah participated in controlling the camp, subjugating civilians, besieging the camp, and denying medicine and food to its residents, which led to the death of dozens of civilians.

On March 23, 2014, Dawah deliberately targeted a group of civilians trying to receive food aid by firing an anti-tank weapon at them, killing at least seven and wounding dozens.

In his closing argument, the Public Prosecutor dealt with all the testimonies of the witnesses, confirming that the accused had fired the missile, and requested that he be sentenced to life imprisonment or fifteen years imprisonment without the possibility of his release.

 

No Escape

Syrian lawyer Abdel Nasser Hoshan said: “Holding those involved in shedding the blood of Syrians accountable indicates that criminals have no hope to escape punishment by fleeing to Europe.”

He told Al-Estiklal: “Preventing the impunity of war criminals is an exceptional path that countries resort to in case the legal conditions required by the national law of those countries are met, including the residence of the perpetrator and the victims on their lands, and therefore the fleeing criminals can be prosecuted under the guise of requesting humanitarian asylum in Europe.”

Hoshan pointed out that “the law recognizes the territorial and personal competence of the country of the offender as the basis for legal prosecution and application of national law.”

The lawyer went on to say: “The jurisdiction is transferred to the foreign national courts that adopt universal jurisdiction, and the International Criminal Court in case the Syrian national judiciary is unable to prosecute and hold accountable, or in case the authority does not wish to do so.”

The Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research commented on the decision to issue the verdict against Dawah, saying that Germany has proven for the second time that it is a pioneer in adhering to holding war criminals and criminals against humanity accountable, not only in Europe but also in the world.

It indicated that it sends a very strong message to criminals that they will not find a safe haven here where there will be no peace with the presence of war criminals and no future without justice.

The head of the Syrian Opposition Judicial Council, Judge and Counselor Khaled Shihab el-Din, affirmed that Germany’s new decision to imprison a person accused of war crimes in Syria is an important step toward achieving the expected justice.

Shihab el-Din told Al-Estiklal that “the trial proves the criminality of the Bashar al-Assad regime against the Syrians and shows the extent of the violations committed by this war criminal and his regime. It also proves the involvement of the militias affiliated with Ahmed Jibril and their support for the Bashar regime in suppressing and killing the Syrians.”

The judge added: “This step confirms that there is no impunity, no matter how long it takes, and if the international circumstances and conditions are a reason for delaying the implementation of justice and accountability, it will inevitably be applied.”

It is also considered “at this time a slap to the normalizers with a dangerous criminal named Bashar al-Assad; this step brings back the fear of accountability and justice in the hearts of the cronies of the Assad regime’s criminal regime, and every time such steps are repeated, confirming the futility of normalization or the rehabilitation of a criminal dangerous to international peace and security.”

It is a clear legal message to the criminals of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and to everyone who committed a violation against the Syrians,” according to Shihab el-Din.

 

Similar Trials

This new ruling of holding those involved in the Assad regime’s killing of Syrians accountable joins previous rulings on German soil for officers, members, and employees of the Assad regime.

The German Koblenz Court previously sentenced the former officer in the Assad regime’s intelligence service, Anwar Raslan, to life imprisonment, on January 13, 2022.

At that time, the trial promised a global precedent in holding the Assad regime accountable for crimes of torture and human rights violations in Syria.

Raslan, 59, took refuge in Germany after fleeing Syria in 2012. His trial began on April 23, 2020, before the Koblenz Court, on charges of torturing detainees in a secret detention center of the Syrian regime in the capital, Damascus.

This former officer in the State Security Apparatus is accused, in particular, of being involved in the killing of 58 people, the rape of others, and the torture of about 4,000 detainees in the prison of the Investigation Department – Branch 251, known as “State Security – Al-Khatib Branch.”

Raslan was the focus of the first trial in the world concerned with atrocities accused of committing the Bashar al-Assad regime after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution.

However, Berlin has taken a new step in this legal path, to try these Syrians accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their country by applying the legal principle of universal jurisdiction that allows its judiciary to prosecute perpetrators of serious crimes, regardless of their nationality or the place where the crimes were committed.

Among the results, the German judiciary announced, on February 24, 2021, the first verdict against a former soldier in the intelligence of the Assad regime named Iyad al-Gharib, and he was tried in a case related to violations attributed to the Bashar al-Assad regime.

The Higher Regional Court in Koblenz sentenced the 44-year-old Syrian to four and a half years in prison for “complicity in crimes against humanity.”

It convicted him of participating in the arrest of at least thirty demonstrators in Douma, in the Damascus countryside, in September or October 2011, and their transfer to an intelligence detention center.

Al-Gharib was an official at the lowest levels of Syrian intelligence before he defected in 2012 and eventually fled Syria in February 2013.

On April 25, 2018, he arrived in Germany after a long journey in Turkiye and then to Greece, and he chose not to conceal his past.

When al-Gharib recounted his arduous journey to the authorities responsible for deciding on his asylum request, he aroused the interest of the German judiciary, which led to his arrest in February 2019, especially since he was under the command of Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and close associate Hafez Makhlouf, who is known for his brutality against the Syrians after the revolution.

 

Complaints in Europe

The German authorities also prosecuted the 36-year-old Syrian doctor, Alaa Mousa, specializing in orthopedic surgery.

Mousa was accused of torturing civilians while he was working as a doctor in a military prison of the Assad regime and hospitals in the governorates of Homs and Damascus between 2011 and 2012.

The German authorities arrested Mousa, who left Syria in mid-2015 and arrived in Germany, like hundreds of thousands of Syrians at the time, in June 2020.

He was accused of torturing detainees and burning their genitals while working as a doctor in military hospitals affiliated with the Syrian regime, causing dozens of deaths.

Mousa’s trial sessions began on January 19, 2022, and the director of the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research, Anwar al-Bunni, suggested that the final verdict against him would be issued in 2023.

Ironically, Dr. Alaa Moussa worked in Germany before some of his victims or their relatives recognized him—his work led him to the courts.

The atrocities the Syrian regime is accused of committing are the focus of many complaints in Europe, most of which were filed by Syrian activists who fled their country and sought refuge in French, German, Swedish, or Austrian courts. Also, lawsuits were filed against the Assad regime, accusing it of launching chemical weapons attacks.

In June 2020, seven Syrians who had been tortured or witnessed rape and sexual assaults in detention centers of the Assad regime had filed a lawsuit specifically targeting nine senior officials in the Air Force Intelligence, including the former head of the agency (in 2019), Jamil Hassan, who is close to Bashar al-Assad.

This prompted Germany and France to issue two international arrest warrants for Hassan. Complaints were also filed in Austria and Norway, as well as Sweden, which in 2017 became the first country whose judiciary convicted a former member of the regime forces of war crimes.

In Sweden, in April 2021, four non-governmental organizations filed judicial complaints against al-Assad and a number of senior regime officials following two chemical attacks in 2013 and 2017.

An international mechanism charged with facilitating investigations into the most serious violations of international law committed since March 2011 continues its work in gathering evidence to facilitate the prosecution of those involved. The United Nations established this mechanism at the end of 2016.