A German federal court has upheld the conviction of a former Syrian secret police officer for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail in Syria. Anwar Raslan was found guilty of crimes against humanity by a court in Koblenz in January 2022 and was sentenced to life in prison. The court determined that Raslan, a former colonel, was responsible for interrogations at a facility in Douma, near Damascus, known as Al-Khatib or Branch 251, where opposition protesters were detained.
Prosecutors in Germany alleged that Raslan oversaw the systematic and brutal torture of over 4,000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012, leading to the deaths of at least 58 individuals. The judges held him accountable for 27 of these deaths. The Federal Court of Justice dismissed Raslan's appeal, stating that there were no legal errors to the detriment of the accused and rejecting procedural objections.
This conviction followed a previous ruling in February 2021 against another former officer, Eyad al-Gharib, who was found guilty of being an accessory to crimes against humanity and was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison by the Koblenz court. Both Raslan and al-Gharib were arrested in Germany in 2019 after seeking asylum in the country. The federal court also rejected al-Gharib's appeal in 2022.
