Germany updates: Court to rule over Syrian 'torture' doctor – DW – 06/16/2025

06/16/2025
June 16, 2025 Frankfurt court to rule in case of Syrian 'torture' doctor
A court ruling is expected in Frankfurt on Monday in the case of a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity.
German state prosecutors have accused Alaa M. of deliberately torturing and murdering prisoners at a military hospitals in the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs under the dictatorial regime of former President Bashar Assad.
The crimes, which were allegedly committed on 18 occasions between 2011 and 2012, are said to have included dousing a teenage boy's genitals with alcohol before setting fire to them.
One former inmate and witness at the trial, which began in 2022, said he had been forced to carry the bodies of patients who had died after being injected by M., according to Der Spiegel news magazine. Another described the Damascus site where he had been detained as a "slaughterhouse."
M. arrived in Germany in 2015 on a visa for highly skilled workers and continued to practice medicine in Germany, working as an orthopedic doctor until he was arrested in June 2020. He denies all charges against him, saying he was too afraid of the military police "in control" at the hospital to speak out.
"I felt sorry for them, but I couldn't say anything, or it would have been me instead of the patient," he told the court.
Prosecutors have called for a life-long prison sentence, while the defense has demanded acquittal.
Germany has tried several supporters of Assad's regime under the legal principle of "universal jurisdiction," which allows for the prosecution of serious crimes even if they were committed abroad.
The first such global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria under the Assad regime opened in the western German city of Koblenz in 2020 and resulted in a former colonel in the Syrian army being sentenced to life in jail in 2022.

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