Prosecuting Syrian War-Crimes Suspects From Berlin

BERLIN—Among the Syrians living here in the German capital, Anwar Raslan had long been notorious. Soon he may be known farther afield—not just as the first senior Syrian official to be held accountable for acts carried out during that country’s conflict, but perhaps more importantly as the defendant in a case that changed the way the world prosecutes war crimes.

In Damascus, Raslan had been a colonel in Syria’s military-intelligence agency, overseeing investigations at an outpost known as Branch 251. In the same building, some 600 people were crammed into cells built for a third as many. Those who were held there were starved, tortured, sexually assaulted, and offered no medical care, rights groups say; most days, six or seven people died as a result.

Then Raslan defected from Bashar al-Assad’s regime, joining an early wave of Syrian migrants in 2012 who were fleeing what would turn into an all-out civil war. He eventually —alone at first, but joined later by