Germany's top court said Tuesday that it has rejected the appeal of a former member of the Syrian regime's secret police who was convicted last year of facilitating the torture of prisoners in his home country.
In a landmark ruling, a court in the western German city of Koblenz had convicted Eyad al-Gharib of accessory to crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 4 1/2 years in prison.
The verdict, which was the first time that a court outside Syria ruled in a case alleging Syrian regime officials committed crimes against humanity, was welcomed by human rights activists and victims of Bashar Assad’s repression.
Al-Gharib, 45, had appealed the sentence, noting that his testimony to German investigators provided significant evidence for the subsequent conviction of a second, more senior Syrian former official.
The Federal Court of Justice said it found no legal errors in the verdict or sentence imposed by the Koblenz court, meaning that the ruling cannot now be challenged.
Almost 10 years since the Arab Spring reached Syria on March 15, 2011, the judgment was the first in the world related to the brutal repression of protesters by the regime in Damascus.
Gharib was accused of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity as a low-ranking member of the intelligence service.
The former colonel allegedly helped arrest at least 30 protesters and delivered them to the Al-Khatib detention center in Damascus after a rally in Duma, northeast of the capital, in the autumn of 2011.
Gharib was the first of two defendants on trial since April 23, 2020, to be sentenced by the court in Koblenz, after judges decided to split the proceedings in two.
The second defendant, Anwar Raslan, 58, was accused directly of crimes against humanity, including overseeing the murder of 58 people and the torture of 4,000 others.
The Koblenz state court concluded that Anwar Raslan was the senior officer in charge of a facility in the Syrian city of Douma known as Al-Khatib, or "Branch 251," where suspected opposition protesters were detained. It sentenced him to life in prison.
The Syrian regime has been accused of various crimes during the decadelong conflict, including torture in prisons, summary executions and the use of chemical weapons.
Victims and human rights groups have said they hope the verdict will be the first step toward justice for countless people who have been unable to file criminal complaints against officials in Syria or before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Since Russia and China have blocked efforts for the United Nations Security Council to refer cases to The Hague-based tribunal, countries such as Germany that apply the principle of universal jurisdiction for serious crimes will increasingly become the venue for such trials, experts say.
Meanwhile, cases brought against loyalists of the Bashar Assad regime, who have engaged in violence and inflicted atrocities for a decade, are growing in Europe.
Germany has used the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, including war crimes and genocide, regardless of where they were committed, after receiving complaints from Syrians who claim to have been tortured in regime jails.