Dutch Court Sentences Rafiq Al Q To 26 Years For Torture And Rape In Syria

A district court in The Hague sentenced a 58-year-old Syrian man to 26 years in prison for crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, committed in Syria during the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The court found he had been head of the interrogation unit of the National Defence Force (NDF), a pro-Assad militia, and that in 2013 and 2014 he tortured detainees at three detention centres near Salamiyah, in western Syria.

ABC News

Prosecutors and the defence can still appeal the verdict, and the case was brought under universal jurisdiction, which allows Dutch courts to try serious international crimes wherever they were committed.

Delivering the verdict, the court said the defendant dehumanised the victims and degraded them to the utmost, and it convicted him of 19 offences against eight victims while acquitting him over a ninth victim because it could not establish he had been her interrogator.

The man, identified only as Rafiq al Q under Dutch privacy regulations, denied involvement and said he had worked as a civil servant, while he was arrested at his home in 2023 after the national crime squad’s international crimes team was tipped off.

The court said the accused was engaged in torture, rape or other sexual abuse of eight victims in this case, either by committing the acts himself or by ordering others to do so.

Presiding judge Wim van Hattum said the suspect was engaged in torture, rape or other sexual abuse of eight victims, and the ruling summary described victims giving compelling testimonies about the impact and consequences they continue to suffer to this day.

Al Jazeera

During the hearings, the court stated that the defendant repeatedly subjected the victims to conditions of extreme fear, threats, pain, hopelessness, and powerlessness.

In a separate account, Al-Jazeera Net reported that the court also described the victims as being handcuffed and blindfolded, beaten with various tools, kicked for long periods, placed inside a car frame, hung by their legs, or subjected to electric shocks.

Al-Jazeera Net further said the court justified its ruling by the exceptional seriousness of the crimes and the suffering endured by the victims, while noting that the court rejected the victims’ financial compensation claims based on lack of jurisdiction in this type of criminal proceedings.

The verdict was described as the first Dutch conviction for atrocities in Syria committed by pro-government forces, and it was also the first time a Dutch court convicted someone of sexual violence as a crime against humanity.

“A Dutch court in The Hague sentenced yesterday, Monday, a former member of an armed group loyal to the head of the ousted Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, to 26 years for crimes against humanity by torturing detainees and raping them more than a decade ago”

Al-Jazeera Net

The case was part of a broader international effort to hold individuals accountable for crimes committed during Syria’s civil war and under Assad’s rule, with the AP noting that Assad fled to Russia after being ousted in December 2024.

The Times of India reported that both prosecutors and the man have 14 days to appeal the verdict, and it said Rafiq al Q arrived in the Netherlands as an asylum seeker in 2021 and was living in Druten before being arrested in 2023.

The AP-linked account also said the Dutch are not alone in prosecuting Syrians linked to the former Assad government, citing a German court sentencing a Syrian doctor to life imprisonment for torture and war crimes and a Paris court in 2024 sentencing three senior Syrian officials in absentia to life terms for complicity in war crimes.

In Syria, the AP-linked report said the first public trial opened in Damascus in April, with ex-brigadier general Atef Najib facing charges related to “crimes against the Syrian people,” state-run news agency SANA reported.