WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
Choose language:
AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS
A German court is expected to deliver its verdict in the case of a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity, including the torture of detainees in military hospitals in Syria, in a trial that has taken on particular significance since the fall of the Assad regime.
The trial against the 40-year-old doctor began in January 2022 before the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main and lasted for 186 hearings, during which around 50 witnesses and victims, as well as legal experts, were heard.
The defendant, who is being named Alaa M. in accordance with German privacy laws, is accused of torturing opponents of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while working as a doctor in military prisons and hospitals in Homs and Damascus between 2011 and 2012.
In court, Alaa M. denied the charges and claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy.
The verdict will be the first in a case of former Syrians accused of state-sponsored torture since the fall of Assad in December 2024. Germany has prosecuted several former Syrian officials in similar cases in recent years.
Assad’s government has denied torturing prisoners.
Alaa M. came to Germany in 2015 and worked as a doctor, becoming one of around 10,000 Syrian medics who have helped alleviate a severe shortage of staff in Germany’s healthcare system.
He was captured in June 2020 and has been in pre-trial detention.
Prosecutors charge him with more than a dozen cases of torture and the murder of a prisoner. In one case, he allegedly performed surgery to correct a broken bone without adequate anesthesia.
He is also accused of attempting to deprive prisoners of their reproductive capacity in two separate cases.
The prosecutors were assisted by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which has previously brought similar cases before German courts.
German prosecutors use universal jurisdiction laws, which allow them to try suspects for crimes against humanity regardless of where the crimes were committed.
The doctor also worked at the Mezzeh 601 military hospital in Damascus, known for its role in the regime’s torture system.
According to Human Rights Watch, the hospital’s morgues and courtyard appeared in photographs documenting widespread, state-sponsored abuses of civilians. The photographs were extracted from Syria by a former Syrian military photographer codenamed Caesar.
Syrian lawyer Anwar al-Buni, who heads the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research in Berlin, a human rights organization that helped prepare the case against Alaa M., said he expected the court to accept the prosecutor’s request for a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
"This was a doctor, not a security officer. His job was to protect human life. The killings and torture were not his task, but he did them willingly, out of blind loyalty to the Assad regime," al-Buni said.
