Germany Arrests Syrian Accused of Crimes Under Assad
An alleged former Syrian prison guard has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity under former president Bashar al-Assad, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The man, identified only as Fahad A., is accused of "acts of killing, torture and deprivation of liberty" while he worked in a Damascus facility run by Syrian intelligence in 2011 and 2012.
German authorities have pursued several suspects for crimes committed in Syria's civil war under the principle of universal jurisdiction, even after Assad's ouster last December.
Prosecutors declined to give Fahad's age or the year he came to Germany but said he was arrested in the town of Pirmasens in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
During his time at the Al-Khatib detention center, also known as Branch 251, Fahad A. allegedly "took part in well over 100 interrogations where prisoners were subjected to severe physical abuse, for instance electrocution or beatings with cables", they said.
"Following his superiors' orders, the suspect also harassed prisoners at night by, for example, hanging them from the ceiling, pouring cold water over them or forcing them to remain in uncomfortable positions," prosecutors allege.
At least 70 prisoners are thought to have died due to such abuse and the "catastrophic" prison conditions.
The alleged offenses occurred in the years of the bloody repression of anti-Assad protests during their uprising against his regime.
"The objective was to suppress the protest movement from early on and to intimidate the population," prosecutors said.
In 2022 former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan was found guilty of overseeing the murders of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the Al-Khatib center in 2011 and 2012.
That was the first international trial over state-sponsored torture in Syrian prisons and was hailed as "historic" by human rights activists.
Europe's biggest economy, then ruled by chancellor Angela Merkel, granted safe haven to hundreds of thousands of Syrians during the 2015-16 refugee influx.
NGOs warned at the time of the danger that people accused of atrocities against civilians for Assad's government were arriving incognito in Europe and obtaining asylum.
Opposition factions toppled Assad in December after five decades of his family's iron-fisted rule and nearly 14 years of brutal war that killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more.
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