The Guardian: A Syrian who suffered torture in Damascus prisons, he met his executioner by chance in a store in Germany

The British Guardian newspaper published a lengthy report on the journey of a Syrian citizen from Damascus prisons to a life of asylum in Germany, where he began another saga in courtrooms, filing lawsuits against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad on charges related to his war crimes.

The newspaper says, in a

that Anwar Al-Bunni devoted his life to defending human rights in his country, Syria.

It was only two months before al-Bunni was in exile in Germany that he found himself face to face in a Turkish store in Berlin in front of the man who had interrogated him in Syria and placed him in prison nearly a decade.

He and his former jailer were shopping at the store near the gates of the Marienfeld refugee camp in West Berlin.

The woes of war and the hardship of life

That was in 2014, a year before Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open Germany's borders to refugees. More than a million people entered the country to escape the ravages of war and the hardship of life in their countries.

Among these deserters, thousands of Syrians found their way to the capital, Berlin.

Al-Banni is a lawyer who has defended human rights and fights the system in the courts for more than 3 decades. He spent many years in prison due to the concern he caused to the Damascus government, and was part of a network of colleagues, friends and former opponents.

"I was with my wife (while we were shopping in the Turkish store) when I confided to her in her ear," I know this man, "but I could not remember him well. After a few days, a friend of mine told me," Did you not know Anwar? " Ruslan is staying with you at Camp Marienfeld? ”“ Only then did I realize it. ”

Anwar Raslan arrives at the Court of Coblenz (French)

They both studied law

Harrison notes in her report that the age difference between the Anwarain (Al-Bunni and Ruslan) is 4 years. Both of them studied the law, but they chose to align themselves with two contradictory parties in light of the "authoritarian" political system in Syria.

Raslan became a police officer before switching to the intelligence service, and there he helped detain al-Bunni.

When al-Bunni met Ruslan by chance, he was focusing on studying legal files, continuing, at a distance, his struggle against the Syrian state and those who mistreated people there.

Al-Banni said that he does not hate Ruslan in person because the problem is with the system, "therefore I do not really have anything against him."

There was no thought that the paths of the two men (Al-Bunni and Ruslan) would meet again after 4 years, and their roles would change as the German judiciary was preparing to hear a famous legal case.

Meanwhile, al-Bunni has been involved in assisting the German Public Prosecution Office, while Ruslan faces a prison sentence.

From his experience he knows her well

Last June, al-Bunni went up to the witness stand in the courtroom to give details of the horrors and bureaucratic procedures in Assad's prisons and torture rooms, which he knows well from his experience.

Al-Bunni said that the lawsuit filed before the German judiciary "is not a personal issue. My goal is to establish justice for all Syrians."

Nearly 10 years after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, Raslan became the first person in the world to appear before a court on charges related to the torture and killing of civilians under the auspices of the state during the raging conflict there.

Al-Bunni, whom the Guardian report described as a thorn in the side of officials in Damascus, helped German authorities find witnesses who showed their willingness to testify before the courts.

Raslan, a former colonel in the Syrian intelligence, is facing charges of crimes against humanity in the early years of the conflict, before defecting from the regime in 2012. He was working at the time in Military Intelligence, where he was said to be heading an investigation unit of the "notorious" Branch 251 and the attached prison. with it.

In his time, horror spread

According to the German claim, the stage in which Ruslan supervised that unit was characterized by widespread horror, during which prisoners were subjected to forms of torture such as electric shocks, beatings and sexual assault for 16 months.

The charge sheet against him claims that more than 4 thousand people have suffered torture in prison during that period, and that more than 58 detainees have died.

Ruslan's trial began on April 23 last before a panel of 3 judges in the historic city of Koblenz on the banks of the Rhine, and the trial is expected to take a year and a little over a year.

A former Syrian intelligence officer named Iyad al-Gharib, who worked under Raslan's command in Damascus, is being tried with him.

The Guardian newspaper described the trial as a "historic moment" for countless Syrians who escaped from the regime's torture chambers or lost loved ones.

If found guilty, Raslan faces life in prison.

Raslan’s trial is not the first attempt to bring the ruling class in Syria to justice, as some Western governments have previously issued arrest warrants against prominent figures.

The Koblenz court before which Anwar Raslan and other accused are being tried (Reuters)

A ray of hope for justice

However, the regime's elites and service officers are still safe as long as they remain inside the Syrian territories, and they only travel to their allies, which will never hand them over.

Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of hope for justice at home or in international courts, but the British newspaper believes that it is unlikely that Bashar al-Assad and his sons will appear before local courts at a time when the opposition is often facing defeats inside Syria.

Since Syria is not a party to the International Criminal Court, the court's prosecutor will not be able to pursue the Damascus government.

The United Nations Security Council can request an investigation to be opened, but such attempts were thwarted by Russia and China.

Certain victory

Other calls for the establishment of a special court, such as the one established to hear war crimes cases in the former Yugoslavia, also failed.

Therefore, national courts remain the main avenue for survivors in their efforts to hold the pillars of the Syrian regime responsible for what happened to them.

Countries such as Germany have incorporated the principle of universal jurisdiction into their laws, allowing their courts to prosecute anyone for committing a crime anywhere in the world, if it is classified as sufficiently dangerous.

In her report, writer Emma Graham Harrison describes Anwar al-Bunni, 61, as "a thin, coarse-looking, bushy man who spent most of his youth in a risky and largely futile struggle defending human rights in a country that has become a symbol of its violation."

When I asked the author of the report, Anwar al-Bunni, if he had given up on continuing his struggle for a better life for Syria, he replied, "I have never lost my faith in my cause. I am certain that we will win."