The Federal Prosecutor has brought charges against a Syrian doctor who last lived in Hesse on charges of crimes against humanity.

As the Karlsruhe investigators announced on Wednesday, the man allegedly tortured and severely ill-treated people in Syrian military hospitals and in a prison of the military secret service between 2011 and 2012.

He is said to have killed a person.

Marlene Grunert

Editor in politics.

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The list of allegations made by the Federal Prosecutor's Office is long and drastic.

Among other things, Alaa M. is said to have doused the genitals of a 14 or 15 year old boy with alcohol in the emergency room of a military hospital and ignited the area with a lighter.

The accused is said to have operated on a bone fracture in one prisoner without adequate anesthesia.

The doctor is said to have severely mistreated another prisoner by kicking a wound with his boots, then dousing it with an alcohol-based disinfectant and setting fire to it.

The doctor is then said to have hit the inmate with a stick until he lost consciousness.

The defendant worked as a doctor in Germany

In mid-2015, Alaa M. came to Germany on a work visa, as a spokesman for the FAZ's Federal Prosecutor confirmed. In Hessisch-Lichtenau, M. worked as an orthopedic surgeon until shortly before his arrest in June 2020. He was charged before the State Security Senate of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court, which now has to examine the indictment and decide whether to open the main proceedings. The trial would be the second in the world against a former member of the Assad regime. The first started in June last year in Koblenz.

In the investigation into Syria, the Federal Prosecutor relies on what is known as the principle of universal law. According to this, the German judiciary can prosecute the most serious crimes, such as crimes against humanity, even if they have no relation to Germany, i.e. were not committed here or by German perpetrators. The Spanish examining magistrate Baltasar Garzón followed the principle of universal law for the first time in 1998 when he issued an international arrest warrant against the Chilean dictator Pinochet.