The Koblenz court judging two syrian intelligence operatives has issued a verdict against Anwar Raslan's co-defendant Eyad Al-Gharib, writes german newspaper BILD:
He helped torture 30 people. Now Syrian Eyad A. (44) has to be imprisoned for four and a half years for complicity in a crime against humanity.
The State Security Senate of the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz sentenced him on Wednesday. It was the world's first criminal trial for state torture in Syria.
According to this, the court was able to prove to the former employee of the Syrian General Intelligence Service (subdivision 40) that he had helped other perpetrators “in the context of an extensive and systematic attack on the civilian population” to “seriously deprive 30 people of physical freedom and during Torture Detention ”.
Specifically, in September / October 2011, after the brutal dissolution of a demo in Douma (Syria), Eyad A. arrested fleeing demonstrators and brought them to prison in Department 251. While monitoring this transport, he saw that the prisoners were already being beaten at this point.
In prison, those arrested were then severely abused and systematically tortured with, among other things, beatings, kicks and electric shocks - he knew this and accepted that with approval. He also knew that the torture was part of a well-organized government effort to suppress the opposition. The prisoners were also denied medical care, personal hygiene and food.
Evidence: witness statements, expert statements - and his confession during an interrogation in August 2018.
The court assessed as mitigating the penalty that his statements led to a trial against an accomplice, that the act was committed in a strictly hierarchical, no-deviating command structure, that he acted as an assistant and, through his self-incriminations, contributed significantly to the evidence of the allegation .
