Former Syrian colonel handed life sentence over torture prison role

A former Syrian colonel has been sentenced life in prison after he was found guilty by a German court of crimes against humanity.

In a landmark ruling, a state court in Koblenz found Anwar Raslan, a 58-year-old former security agent, co-perpetrator in at least 4,000 cases of torture, 30 murders and five cases of sexual violence.

The conviction is the first by a court for criminal torture against a high-ranking former official of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. It was also the first time ordinary Syrians faced their tormentors in an open court.

Outside the court building on Thursday, Syrians gathered from early morning, many holding photograph of missing loved ones.

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“This day and this verdict are important for all Syrians who have suffered and are still suffering from the Assad regime’s crimes,” said Ruham Hawash, a torture survivor who gave evidence in court.

Wassim Mukdad, another Syrian torture survivor who testified, said the verdict was “history being written in front of our eyes”.

The court heard how Raslan worked for 18 years as an intelligence agent, rising to become head of the domestic intelligence “investigation” service. In this role he supervised a prison known as “Branch 251” in 2011 and 2012.

Prosecutors accused him of overseeing beatings with “fists, wires and whips”, “sleep deprivation”, electrocution and rape.  He defected in 2012, sought asylum in Germany two years later and was arrested in 2019 after being questioned by police about another Syrian official.

In the trial, Raslan said he had had no hand in the mistreatment of detainees and actually tried to help some.

Torture wounds

The Assad regime consistently denies there is torture in Syrian prisons, despite evidence to the contrary, including survivor testimony and a huge cache of torture prison photographs smuggled out of the country by a whistleblower.

In more than 107 sittings the court in the southwestern city of Koblenz heard testimony from nearly 50 witnesses who had survived their imprisonment. One of the witnesses, Nuran al-Ghamain, told the court she was arrested during the early demonstrations against the Assad regime in 2011 and tortured in Branch 251.

Cells were packed with prisoners bleeding from torture wounds, she said, and the ventilation shafts were shut regularly to induce panic. “It was like a big coffin in which people were tortured and died daily, in every second of the day,” she said.

She collapsed in court when she saw Raslan for the first time since her release in 2012. She said it was a relief to have a chance to testify and thanked the German court for including sexual violence as a crime against humanity.

Human rights groups estimate that at least 130,000 people have been detained or forcibly disappeared by Assad’s regime in the past decade.

Last year, in a related case, the Koblenz court found a former Syrian prison guard guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity and imposed a 4½-year prison sentence.

German prosecutors have taken on these cases under universal jurisdiction, which allows any country to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes against humanity committed elsewhere. German law allows survivors to join such cases as co-plaintiffs.

The European Union’s judicial co-operation organisation, Eurojust, said the Koblenz ruling “will leave a lasting mark on international criminal justice”.

With international tribunals politically blocked from hearing such cases by China and Russia, which are allies of Syria, similar trials are now looming across Europe – particularly in Germany. Next week a former Syrian prison doctor will go on trial in Frankfurt accused of torturing prisoners.