Justice: Never Too Late To Start

"It means a lot to me because I have a feeling that justice is happening."

"It's a small step toward the justice we hope will be achieved: accountability for all those who committed violations [of human rights], including the criminals who killed my son."

Mariam Alhallah, Syrian refugee in Germany

 

"It's hard to talk about justice given that hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured and tens of thousands have died as a result."

"International criminal justice, universal jurisdiction always comes too late and it's never enough but… I would say it's an important step forward."

Wolfgang Kaleck, European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights

Syrians stood outside the court in Koblenz clutching photos of victims of the civil war    Getty Images

"For me, this is the first step in a very long way towards justice."   

"[Many stories have not been heard]. Either because they are still detained now - while we're talking, they're suffering torture and horrible situations in the detention centres. Or because they were murdered."   

"[And then], there were those who died as they tried to reach Europe, drowning at sea or freezing on Europe's borders."

Wassim Mukdad, Syrian refugee in Germany

Twenty-four survivors were co-plaintiffs in the case including Wassim Mukdad (L) and Hussein Ghrer (R) Getty Images

 

Anwar Raslan, an ex-intelligence officer for the Syrian Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad, -- where a Shiite minority rules over a Sunni majority, and raised a protest movement to a civil war where the regime barrel-bombed and chemical-bombed its Syrian population, killing an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people creating millions of refugees fleeing state-ordered military violence to quell a revolt of mistreated Sunni civilians -- was found guilty of murder, rape and crimes against humanity in a German court on Thursday.

Colonel Anwar Raslan had exited Syria, removing himself from the Syrian military, jointed the opposition, abandoning his country to seek refuge elsewhere, and ended up in Germany after his defection in 2012, being granted asylum in Germany in 2014. An investigation by German authorities of backgrounds of some of the estimated 800,000 Syrian refugees that Germany had welcomed in a mass shift of populations under duress, saw him arrested and stand trial.

It is a trial that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while denying that Syria had committed war crimes against its Sunni population, has watched with curiosity, obviously interested in the outcome. It is the West that was aghast at the criminal violence the Syrian regime inflicted on its people. And although Sunni Arab states in the Middle East were displeased with the violence that left half of Syria's population homeless, none chose to intervene, though President al-Assad was in bad odour with the region's Arab League. 

 

The Arab League now seems prepared to welcome him back into the fold.

Anwar Rasland was found guilty of 27 counts of murder, rape and sexual assault that took place at a Damascus prison operated by a unit of the regime's security services that he happened to be the head of. Germany's universal jurisdiction laws, allowing courts to proceed with prosecutions of crimes against humanity committed anywhere outside Germany led to this prosecution.

The UN International Criminal Court has been hands-off in prosecuting any within the Syrian regime, including Bashar al-Assad, because of the protective intervention of two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council; Russia and China. Making an example of Syria in respect of its horrendous persecution and lethal violence hurled at its dissenting population would headlight similar crimes committed by both China and Russia.

Supported by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, German prosecutors had gathered evidence from close to fifty Syrians since 2015, who had survived torture in Syrian prisons and who now live in Germany. They recounted truly terrible experiences where detainees were beaten, doused in cold water, raped, hung from ceilings for hours. Their fingernails were torn out, and torturers administered electric shocks.

The agonized screams of people being tortured rang out through the prisons constantly. Detainees spoke of their attackers in possession of specialized "tools" of torture, people whose sadistic streaks gave them huge enjoyment in the power of life and death they had over their fellow citizens in a sectarian-opposition conflict of uneven proportions; unarmed citizens languishing under the brutality of 'security' personnel at the orders of the state regime.

Ex-officer jailed for Syrian war crimes after landmark German trial    Reuters

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