Eyad al-Gharib: First in the world, Germany condemns the Syrian regime’s official for crimes against humanity

The former junior regime official was arrested in Berlin alongside former senior regime official, Colonel Anwar Raslan, in February 2019 under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which gives jurisdiction to a national court over serious crimes against international law , even when they were not committed in the territory.

Raslan, a former high-ranking intelligence officer, is still on trial. He is accused of supervising the torture of at least 4,000 prisoners during the uprising in Syria. At least 58 of the prisoners died. Rape and sexual assault allegedly occurred in at least one case.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been repeatedly accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity throughout the country’s nearly decade-long war. But attempts to create an international tribunal have been hampered by vetoes from Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council.

Syrian officials have repeatedly denied the charges, insisting that they target terrorists and non-peaceful protesters.

“Today is an exceptional day in the lives of Syrians,” Amer Matar, a 33-year-old Syrian who said he was tortured by Raslan, told CNN. “This is a very important message for us Syrians that justice can really be achieved, even in a very distant place like Germany, even if partial, and for specific people.”

The International Justice and Accountability Commission (CIJA), investigators who provided documentary evidence used by the prosecution, called Tuesday’s verdict “historic”.

“This is a historic verdict,” CIJA director Nerma Jelacic told CNN. “Not only because he is the first to convict a Syrian regime official for crimes against humanity, but also because he recognizes that his crimes were part of a widespread and systematic attack orchestrated by the highest bodies of the Assad regime.

“This is just the first of many other trials and investigations that we support,” added Jelacic. “It has been almost 10 years since the Eyad A crimes. [al-Gharib] he was condemned for being committed in the first days of the uprising, when the regime suppressed the demonstrators with bare arms ”.

Since 2012, CIJA has been collecting evidence of the Syrian government’s alleged crimes from investigators known as “document hunters”. They are Syrians recruited and trained by former war crimes investigators and lawyers to smuggle thousands of government documents out of Syria’s war zones.

The human rights group Amnesty International called on more countries to follow Germany’s example. “We call on more states to follow Germany’s lead by investigating and prosecuting individuals suspected of committing war crimes or other crimes under international law in Syria through their national courts under the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director of the organization for the Middle East and North Africa.

Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, considered one of the driving forces behind the Koblenz trial, called the decision “a message to all criminals who still commit the most horrible crimes in Syria and to remind them that the time of impunity has come, and there is no safe place to escape. ”