GERMANS CONVICT SYRIAN IN TORTURE TRIAL
A German court issued a landmark ruling Wednesday, sentencing a former member of Syria’s intelligence services to 4 1⁄2 years in prison for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity through torture and the deprivation of liberty.
The trial of Eyad alGharib, 44, began last year, alongside that of a more senior intelligence officer, Anwar Raslan, 57. Both had sought asylum in Germany.
A court in the German town of Koblenz found Gharib guilty of detaining at least 30 opposition activists after anti-government demonstrations began in 2011. The court said that Gharib sent the protesters to an intelligence center where he knew they would be subjected to torture. Raslan remains on trial.
Wednesday’s decision was historic: the first court case in the world over statesponsored torture under Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government. Since the trial began in April, there have been testimonies from torture victims and witnesses, including a guard from the al-Khatib detention center, also known as Branch 251.
While Gharib may have been a low-level officer, the trial involved evidence on how the highest levels of Syria’s state apparatus used torture and war crimes to forcibly suppress mass demonstrations.
The court said it had found that the Syrian government carried out an “extensive and systematic attack on the civilian population” when the large-scale street protests of the Arab Spring reached Syria.
“It’s a milestone but it’s a first step in a very long way to reach justice,” said Wassim Mukdad, who was detained in Syria in September 2011 and gave evidence in court.
One of more than a dozen Syrians who took the stand, Mukdad recounted how he was blindfolded and hit with a rifle, before being loaded onto a bus and taken to Branch 251. During 16 days in detention, he lost more than 37 pounds. At one point he said he was packed into a cell a little over 230 square feet with 87 others. He described the experience as “hell.”
Gharib was convicted of rounding up demonstrators following a protest in the Syrian city of Douma and accompanying them by bus to Branch 251, despite knowing of the widespread abuses that happened there.