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It is the most significant step so far in a more than decade-long search for justice for those that suffered at the hands of the Syrian state apparatus during its efforts to brutally suppress mass street protests during the Arab Spring and in later years of bloody conflict.
The trial, which began in April 2020, marked the first time Syrian victims had the chance to face in court the perpetrators of the crimes by Assad’s government during that time. Victims who spoke in court as witnesses have described the case as a milestone, but still just one step on the road to accountability.
Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who was a witness in the case described Thursday’s verdict as “historic” and a “victory for Syrians.” While it was a single conviction, the whole Syrian state apparatus had been on trial for the first time, he said.
“He was convicted as part of this machine, part of this killer machine that arrested Syrians, killed them tortured them,” he said. “It’s a conviction for the whole regime.”
The proceedings against Raslan began with a chance encounter seven years ago when al-Bunni recognized Raslan at his aslyum center in Berlin. At first, he could not figure out where he knew him from. It was only after a fellow refugee told him that a regime official was in the same facility, that it all fell into place.
In court, Bunni recounted how Raslan was the man who had detained him outside his house in the Kafr Souseh neigbhorhood of Damascus in 2006, after which he spent five years in prison. After recognizing Raslan in Berlin, Bunni lodged a complaint with police, and Raslan was eventually arrested in 2019.
Raslan was convicted of crimes that took place between April 29, 2011, and Sept. 7, 2012, when Syria was gripped by revolution. Prosecutors said his crimes happened “in the context of an extensive and systematic attack on the civilian population.” They argue that the unit Raslan headed at Branch 251 tortured at least 4,000 detainees during that period, using methods including beatings and electric shocks.
In their final arguments, Raslan’s attorneys said that he had not approved the torture, had even punished soldiers for abusing prisoners. “An employee of a criminal regime cannot just pick up the phone when he realizes that injustice is occurring in the prison,” his defense lawyers said, according to German newspaper Die Zeit. Raslan had announced his defection in 2012.
His co-defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, 44, a low-level officer, was sentenced to 4½ years in jail early last year.
Syrian activists living in Germany and abroad welcomed the verdict but also warned that atrocities continue in Syria. The German-Syrian human rights organization Adopt a Revolution demanded in a statement issued ahead of the verdict that the judgment should not be used as “a fig leaf for political inaction,” saying that the German government should enact a nationwide halt to deportations to Syria and make sure that Raslan’s superiors would not go unpunished.
U.S.-based nonprofit group Human Rights Watch described the conviction as “a groundbreaking step toward justice for serious crimes in Syria” and called on other countries to follow Germany’s lead. Emphasizing the central role of Syrian survivors, lawyers, and activists in the trial, the organization lamented the challenges presented by witness protection.
Steve Kostas, the senior legal adviser at the Open Society Justice Initiative, noted that while the trial was about events in the past, they continue to have relevance in Syria.
“It laid bare the systemic atrocities that continue to this day against innocent Syrians,” Kostas said in a statement. His organization represented in the trial five people who survived torture during detention and interrogation.
The trial took place under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” which is enshrined in German law and allows for the overseas trials of those accused of committing grave acts such as genocide or war crimes.
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that some crimes are so serious that normal territorial restraints on prosecutions do not apply.
From the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidis to Syrian state-sponsored torture and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who contributed columns to The Washington Post, in Istanbul, the German legal system is increasingly a place to seek justice for crimes committed far outside its borders.
According to a 2020 report, there are more than a dozen active cases related to crimes committed in Syria taking place in Germany. And activists hope that the convictions of Raslan and al-Gharib will just be a first step: next week a court in Frankfurt will begin to hear the trial of a Syrian doctor accused of torturing opponents of Assad’s government in miltiary medical facilities.
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