Bashar al-Assad, the defiant president of Syria, may never go on trial, at least not as long as his patrons in Russia don’t wish to replace him. But an ongoing trial in a German court in the quiet city of Koblenz against two regime officials, Anwar Raslan and Eyad al-Gharib, is slowly but steadily quashing any hopes that Assad may have had that Europe will normalize ties with his regime anytime soon. The trial is also giving millions of Syrian refugees in Europe, who have lived under the fear that they may be forced to return to their home countries, hope that their hosts may finally understand their vulnerability.
The court has been revealing, one witness at a time—in the testimony of survivors of torture in Syrian prisons, of relatives of those who were killed, of experts, and of regime insiders—the extent of the Syrian government’s crimes against humanity. For the first time, it’s possible for outsiders to perceive how, under Assad’s leadership, atrocities became a routine way of life.
