Koblenz | German justice on Wednesday sentenced a former member of the Syrian intelligence services to 4.5 years in prison for “complicity in crimes against humanity” in the context of the first trial in the world linked to the abuses attributed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad .
The Koblenz Regional High Court convicted Syrian Eyad al-Gharib, 44, of having participated in the arrest in September or October 2011 of at least 30 demonstrators in Douma, near Damascus, and their transfer to an intelligence service detention center.
The accused hid his face from the cameras with a file and listened to his verdict with folded arms, staring, with a medical mask over his face.
The court remained below the requisitions of the prosecution which had requested five and a half years.
As the tenth anniversary of the start of the popular uprising in Syria approaches on March 15, 2011, this is the first time in the world that a court has ruled on a case related to Damascus’ brutal and bloody crackdown on protests for the freedom organized within the framework of the “Arab Spring”.
Eyad al-Gharib answered for complicity in crimes against humanity. He was accused of having participated in the arrest and incarceration in a secret detention center of the regime, “branch 251” or Al-Khatib, of at least 30 demonstrators at the end of a rally in Douma, capital of Eastern Ghouta, in September or October 2011.
He was the first of the two defendants who appear since April 23 before the High Regional Court of Koblenz (west) to receive his sentence, the judges having chosen to split the proceedings in two.
The second accused, Anwar Raslan, 58, considered much more central in the vast Syrian security apparatus, is being prosecuted for crimes against humanity for the death of 58 people and the torture of 4,000 detainees in particular.
The trial of this former colonel is expected to last at least until the end of October.
To try them, Germany applies the principle of universal jurisdiction which makes it possible to prosecute the perpetrators of the most serious crimes, regardless of their nationality and the place where the crimes were committed.
Diaspora
Appeals before national courts in Germany, Sweden and France are increasing at the initiative of the large Syrian diaspora who have taken refuge in Europe. They are currently the only possibility to judge the abuses perpetrated in Syria due to the paralysis of international justice.
Eyad al-Gharib served in the lower echelons of intelligence before deserting in 2012 and finally fleeing Syria in February 2013.
Arrived on April 25, 2018 in Germany after a long odyssey in Turkey and then in Greece, he has never concealed his past.
It was even when he recounted his winding journey to the authorities responsible for ruling on his asylum application that the German justice system began to take an interest in him, which led to his arrest in February 2019.
The prosecution assures that he was a cog in a system where torture was practiced with “an almost industrial scale”.
Remained in the shadow of Anwar Raslan during the 10-month hearing, Eyad al-Gharib remained silent and hid his face from the cameras. He nevertheless wrote a letter in which he expressed his grief for the victims.
Ferule
A civil party lawyer, Patrick Kroker, lamented his silence. People “of his rank can be very important in informing us about the (Syrian officials) that we are really targeting, but it is something he chose not to do,” he said.
More than a dozen Syrians marched to the bar to testify to the appalling abuse they endured in Al-Khatib prison.
Some witnesses were interviewed anonymously, with their faces hidden or wearing a wig for fear of reprisals against their relatives still in Syria.
For the first time, photos of the “Caesar file” were also presented in court. This ex-photographer of the military police exfiltrated at the risk of his life 50,000 photos showing 6,786 Syrian detainees frozen by a brutal death, starving and tortured.
Photos that were analyzed in court by a forensic pathologist, Professor Markus Rotschild, constituting overwhelming material evidence.