Syrian Doctor Alaa Moussa Sentenced To Life In Germany For Torturing Assad Opponents

Alaa Moussa, a Syrian doctor accused of torturing opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany after a trial in Frankfurt that lasted more than three years and a half.

“The biggest prison scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany—that is, in short, how former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger described the findings of an investigative report in which media organizations participated, revealing torture and humiliations of inmates at a prison in southwestern Germany”

Al-Jazeera Net

France 24 said the 40-year-old denied charges including setting fire to the genitals of a teenager and administering a lethal injection to a detainee who had resisted the blows, while Judge Christoph Koller said, "He killed two people and seriously injured nine others."

Al-Jazeera Net

Europa Today reported that the verdict was pronounced after a long process in Francoforte and that the court found Moussa guilty of torturing adversaries of the Syrian president between 2011 and 2012.

Europa Today also said the judge stated that the verdict shows that "la sofferenza delle vittime non è dimenticata" and that, given the "gravità eccezionale dei crimini," the life sentence was combined with a minimum mandatory penalty for a period still to be defined.

Germany’s state-torture prosecutions rely on universal jurisdiction, and deutschland.de says the Koblenz Higher Regional Court convicted Anwar R. to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 2011 and 2012.

deutschland.de quotes the federal justice minister Marco Buschmann saying, "Crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished, wherever they are committed and by whom they are committed."

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch described the Koblenz decision on January 13, 2022, saying the German court handed down its decision in the trial of Anwar R., a former member of the General Intelligence Directorate of Syria, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Human Rights Watch also said the trial proceeded in German and that "The absence of translation services" excluded some survivors and community members from the trial.

Amnesty International called the Koblenz verdict a historic victory, saying it allows the voices of "tens of thousands of victims" of unlawful detention, torture and sexual violence to be heard.

“A judgment in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction”

deutschland.de

Amnesty International also said universal jurisdiction is the only means of achieving justice because "there is no viable path to refer these cases to the International Criminal Court".

la Repubblica reported that the Koblenz court sentenced Anwar Raslan to life imprisonment for complicity in torture of at least 4,000 detainees in Section 251 and that in at least 58 cases the tortures led to deaths.

la Repubblica added that the verdict marks the first attempt to do justice for more than 130,000 people detained or disappeared in Syrian prisons from 2011 to today, and it said Syria did not join the Rome Statute so crimes could be brought before The Hague only by the UN Security Council, which Russia and China blocked.