Anwar Raslan heard the guilty verdict as he had already followed the entire process: without recognizable emotions, sometimes with his eyes closed.

Sometimes he took notes.

He remained calm even when the judge mentioned the torture methods that were being used under his responsibility.

When it came to hell in the basement of the Damascus Al-Khatib prison, for which Raslan was responsible, and where the torture, serious bodily harm and killings took place.

The Higher Regional Court of Koblenz sentenced him to life imprisonment on Thursday for crimes against humanity.  

Julian Staib

Political correspondent for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, based in Wiesbaden.

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With the judgment, a historic process came to an end in Koblenz.

For the first time, members of the Syrian regime had to answer for crimes against humanity.

The basis for the process, which has received much international attention, is the principle of world law, which enables criminal offenses to be prosecuted worldwide, regardless of who committed them and where.  

A lawyer who made a career in the secret service

"The Syrian regime is not on trial here," emphasized the judge when pronouncing the verdict.

But many Syrians saw the trial as a symbol against the ongoing injustice.

The verdict against Raslan was attended by Syrian witnesses, co-plaintiffs and human rights activists in the courtroom.

During a pause, some of them hugged.  

The higher regional court had meticulously dealt with the case since April 2020. In early 2021, co-defendant Eyad Alghareib was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity; he had taken demonstrators to the prisons, had been a henchman of the regime. His trial had been severed and decided earlier. The allegations against Raslan were far more serious.

The trained lawyer had made a career in the secret service up to the rank of colonel. He headed the investigative unit of Department 251 of the General Secret Service responsible for the Damascus area. His office was in the building of the Al-Khatib prison for which he was responsible. The secret services and their prisons were and are a central means of the regime to crush the opposition. In Al-Khatib Prison alone, at least 4,000 prisoners were detained between April 2011 and September 2012, which was the subject of the trial. They were tortured, beaten, raped, humiliated and crammed into overcrowded cells in inhumane conditions. Some went mad, others tried to kill themselves. The court judged the inhumane conditions of detention to be torture.  

Convicted of murder in "at least" 27 cases

In his plea, the representative of the Federal Public Prosecutor demanded a life sentence and the determination of the particular gravity of the guilt for murder in at least 30 cases and for torture in at least 4,000 cases.

The court only partially followed suit.

It convicted Raslan among other things of murder in “at least” 27 cases and of torture in 25 cases, and furthermore of sexual assault and rape in two cases.

The numbers were presumably much higher, but the court only included the cases heard by witnesses.

It did not see a particular gravity of the guilt - possibly because Raslan had turned away from the regime in 2012 and left Syria, perhaps also because he had at least partially confessed.  

Raslan's defense attorneys had demanded an acquittal.

The accused had neither tortured nor given instructions to do so, it said in her plea.

He even punished employees for torture and arranged for prisoners to be released.

In addition, the regime had, to a certain extent, sidelined him.  

A look into the unbelievable horror

The court did not obey. “He knew that and in what way was tortured,” said the judge. Raslan "at least accepted the deaths". His "instructions" were carried out in prison. "The accused did not have to specifically order the use of torture", torture had been an "exercise" for decades. There are no indications that the regime has "cold-cut" the accused. The court sees Raslan as a “technocrat” who was interested in gathering information, who despised the masses of unprovoked torture - but hardly for moral reasons. The court nevertheless appreciated a "partial confession" by Raslan - among other things, he had admitted responsibility for the interrogation department.  

During the pronouncement of the verdict, the judge repeatedly referred to the incredible horror that the detainees had to endure in Al-Khatib prison. More than 80 witnesses appeared in the course of the trial, many of whom had been imprisoned in Al Khatib Prison, many several times. Many of them showed the horror they had experienced, many still suffer from the physical and psychological consequences today. Hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured since the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime in early 2011, more than 102,000 disappeared by force, and more than 14,500 were murdered through torture. Anwar Raslan was part of this torture machine.  

On the sidelines of the trial, several of the co-plaintiffs had expressed the hope that the Koblenz trial would send a signal against the lawlessness in Syria and that such trials would also be possible on Syrian soil at some point.

So far, however, that's nothing but wishful thinking.

The regime in their homeland continues to murder unhindered.