Justice found? Germany sentences war criminal, bringing hope to Syrians.

When a German court this month found a former high-ranking Syrian government official guilty of war crimes, it wasn’t just the victims’ families who felt hope.

So too did an international community of human rights lawyers and activists, who saw the verdict as one that might open a path to justice for other victims in war-torn Syria and help deter such crimes in similar conflicts elsewhere.

“The trial could really create the conditions to push the door open to wider accountability for the conflict in Syria,” says Balkees Jarrah, the interim international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “The more judicial activity there is in response to demands from survivors and others, the harder – we hope – it will be to sweep the accountability issue under the rug. This shows the long arm of justice, but it also shows that justice is a long game.”

The former Syrian official, Anwar Raslan, was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity including murder, torture, and rape. Just a week after his conviction, another trial began against Dr. Alaa Mousa who is accused of torturing more than a dozen Syrian dissidents and murdering at least one in military detention facilities. Activists say seeing these figures in the dock has emboldened more witnesses to come forward.

These are the first trials anywhere in the world that address state-sponsored torture in Syria. More are on the horizon in Germany and other parts of Europe, showcasing the potential of European national courts to be a tool for justice in war crimes prosecution, when specialized tribunals such as those used for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda or the International Criminal Court are not an option.

“It’s not just about Syria and Syrians,” says Syrian lawyer and former political prisoner Anwar al-Bunni. “This sends a message to all the criminals and dictators who are comfortable thanks to the political relationships that protect them: Nobody can protect you … if the victims decide to have justice. Maybe with this work we can save millions of lives.”

Finding the tools and will to act

The crimes of Bashar al-Assad’s regime happen in a country thousands of miles away. For alleged perpetrators to then become defendants in, say, a German or Swedish court years later, many things have to fall into place.

The biggest issue is the willingness of the courts and prosecutors to get involved. Most courts will only hear criminal cases where they have jurisdiction over the people involved – usually via the nationality of the accused or the victims – or over the place where the crime took place. That poses a problem with war crimes, because they can rarely be tried in courts that have jurisdiction over the people or places involved.

Thomas Frey/dpa/Reuters

Samar Al Bradan records proceedings in the trial of Syrian Anwar Raslan, later convicted of crimes against humanity, for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights at the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany, July 18, 2021.

That has spurred the development of the principle of “universal jurisdiction”: any court is considered to have jurisdiction in a case where the crime is so serious that to let it go untried would be a miscarriage of justice.

Unlike many other European nations, Germany has a special war crimes unit, and it opened a structural investigation into torture in Syria in 2015. Yet even with that pathway in place, trials require time and resources, along with a few unique factors: perpetrators who are present in the country, survivors willing to provide witness testimony, and prosecutors who can connect the dots and invoke universal jurisdiction.

All these factors came together in Germany, now home to more Syrian refugees than any other country in Europe. It’s no coincidence police investigators and prosecutors have been most active in this country, says Ms. Jarrah, as this critical mass offers up many potential witnesses. In these two cases, the defendants themselves had left Syria in hopes of building a new life in Europe.

“Germany and German justice have a vested interest in the matter,” agrees Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador and chairman of the advisory board of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which helped build evidence for the case.

The evidence used in Mr. Raslan’s trial included the “Caesar files” – a body of 28,000 photos documenting the crimes in state-run detention centers – that were smuggled out of Syria. Now with Mr. Raslan’s trial part of the public record in Germany, the information that came out can be used in other prosecutions in Germany or elsewhere in Europe.

Germany has also issued an arrest warrant against a high-level Syrian official who is not present on German soil, as have courts in Spain and France. “There’s power in the issuance of that warrant, because it serves to ostracize that individual, shrink their world, and signal the seriousness of the crime they’ve been accused of,” says Ms. Jarrah.

Inspiration for Syrians

Germany’s trials are particularly poignant for victims and all those who have devoted a decade documenting the war crimes of Mr. Assad’s regime – only to be left with the feeling that nobody cares. Russian and Chinese support for the Assad regime at the United Nations Security Council has blocked efforts to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. The latter prosecutes crimes against humanity when national systems are unwilling or unable to do so.

“For Syrians in general, to see somebody with the highest rank of head of general intelligence being put on trial sends a very heartening, morale-boosting signal that there’s not impunity writ large for the crimes being being committed in Syria,” says Hanny Megally, member of a United Nations committee investigating atrocities committed in Syria since March 2011, when the Syrian regime cracked down violently on Arab Spring protests.

But crimes such as the torture and killing of detainees, he points out, started decades earlier under Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez.

After finding shelter in Germany, Mr. Bunni launched a legal research center in Berlin that helps identify witnesses and victims willing to testify in a court. Survivors face many risks, he says, even in the relative safety of Germany: potential consequences for relatives who remain back home, reputational risks as they rebuild their lives, and psychological scarring from reliving and recounting such violent experiences that some barely survived.

“The victims are heroes for taking all these risks and giving testimony,” says Mr. Bunni.

The fact that European national courts are trying Syrian war criminals by invoking universal jurisdiction has destabilized the sense of safety felt by regime officials with blood in their hands, regardless of whether they are still in Syria or mixed in with the refugee population in Europe, he says. Mr. Bunni estimates that there are at least a thousand still at large in Europe.

“There is no safe haven,” says Mr. Bunni. Word filtering in from the streets of Damascus, he notes, is that some Syrian officials have sought to procure passports under different names or modified their photos to prepare for a possible flight abroad.

“And perhaps there’s a new momentum around these issues,” says Mona Rishmawi, the United Nations chief of rule of law, equality, and nondiscrimination. “There’s a feeling that justice has to be pursued, and Germany led the way to show that this can be done. Fortunately this trial happened and can open the way for more trials. We are documenting conflict after conflict and seeing atrocities taking place. You know, we cannot just be in the business of counting bodies.”

“There is no time limit”

What makes Germany’s verdict against Mr. Raslan so remarkable is that it was the first conviction of a high-ranking official of a regime still in power. This is the fruit of international cooperation mechanisms long in the making, as well as greater experience in collecting and sharing evidence, say former international war crimes prosecutors.

Mr. Rapp points out the European experience dealing with the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Transatlantic efforts to share intelligence and identify perpetrators culminated in the creation of the Hague-based Genocide Network. Today, programs like Eyewitness tap individuals armed with smartphones to track war crimes around the world.

Experts agree chances are slim that Mr. Assad might face justice in a courtroom, mostly for geopolitical reasons. But there’s hope. “The last thing [Slobodan Milošević] expected was that he would appear before the ICC,” notes Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as that for Rwanda.

Nobody in the Arab world thought that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would be tried. Germany is still prosecuting even elderly Nazi war criminals. All these things add up, Mr. Goldstone says, to “an important message to war criminals that there is no time limit and no matter how long they live they can be brought to justice.”