Former Syrian intelligence officer convicted for crimes against humanity
BEIRUT â In what was seen as a watershed moment in the fight for accountability in Syria's war, a German court convicted a former Syrian intelligence officer on Thursday of carrying out crimes against humanity while heading a detention center in Damascus, concluding what activists and human rights advocates say is a landmark trial over systematic torture perpetrated by Syria's government.
Anwar Raslan, a 58-year-old colonel in the Syrian state security apparatus who worked in the Branch 251 detention center during 2011 and 2012, was handed a life sentence in prison by a court in the German city of Koblenz.
It was the second conviction of a Syrian government official for crimes against humanity. Almost one year ago, the same, an underling of Raslan, to four and a half years in prison. Both he and Raslan were arrested in February 2019; Raslan came to Germany as a refugee in 2014 after having escaped Syria in 2012. German prosecutors tried them under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which holds that national courts can have jurisdiction over crimes against international law even if they take place outside the country's territory.
