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The legal premieres in Koblenz and Celle were as long overdue as they were impressive.
In Koblenz, the former Syrian secret service employee Eyad A. was convicted, who had tortured opponents of the regime in Syria, then went into exile and was charged with the torture by the host country, in this case Germany.
It is the first case in the world in which someone is held accountable by the judiciary in a third country for state crimes in their former home country.
In Celle, on the other hand, a leading German head of the Islamic State was punished for the first time: Abu Walaa has to go to prison for over ten years.
Both judgments cannot be spread far enough in the world.
In the case of the Syrian, the henchmen Lukashenko and Putin, the helpers in the Uyghur camps in China or in the prisons of Myanmar, now know that no one is safe from punishment who participates in such crimes and believes that he could someday go into hiding abroad and then go into hiding start new life.
The further developed international law gives the state judiciary worldwide the right to prosecute such acts;
you don't need the International Criminal Court in The Hague for that.
If this legal opinion had already existed in 1945, the Nazis who fled to South America via the “rat line” would have come to court in Argentina.
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And anyone who, like Eyad A., is recognized by his former victims on the street in Germany today is investigating against the German authorities.
The thugs who drag demonstrators into cars in Minsk, the secret service people who commit crimes in Russia and abroad and are identified in the process, have no refuge in Germany.
The IS preacher Walaa, on the other hand, is an example of the fact that Germany just does not look on while foreign extremists use Germany as a base of operations and feel safe doing so.
The IS man from Hildesheim and the Syrian secret service employee can still be happy to have been charged in Germany.
For what they were charged with, they would likely have been executed in their home states.