KOBLENZ: Two suspected members of President Bashar Assad’s security services had charges of torture and sexual assault read out against them on Thursday in a German court, in what lawyers say is the first trial for war crimes by Syrian government agents.
Anwar R., a former intelligence officer who applied for asylum in Germany six years ago after leaving Syria, is charged with 58 murders in a Damascus prison where prosecutors say at least 4,000 opposition activists were tortured in 2011 and 2012.
Grey haired, with a bald patch and wearing a moustache, glasses and a dark sweater, he sat calmly behind a glass cubicle erected under hygiene rules adopted by the court against the coronavirus outbreak. The charges read out included at least one rape and multiple sexual assaults.
The second suspect, Eyad A., 43, charged with facilitating the torture of at least 30 opposition activists arrested after an anti-Assad demonstration in 2011, covered his face with his grey jacket hood as he took his seat at the court. He arrived in Germany in April 2018.
Arabic interpreters repeated the charges to the suspects, identified by their first names only under German privacy laws.
Campaigners have hailed the process as a first step toward justice for thousands of Syrians who say they were tortured in government facilities, after attempts to establish an international tribunal for Syria failed.
The Assad government denies it tortures prisoners.
“The defendants are accused of having been members of Syria’s general intelligence directorate,” said Petra Zimmermann, spokeswoman of the higher regional court in Koblenz. “Anwar R. is believed to have been the head of an investigation unit in department 251 which was responsible for Damascus. It is believed that systematic torture of prisoners occurred at this prison and that he was aware of that.”
German prosecutors say Anwar R. oversaw interrogations before leaving Syria in 2012. He arrived in Germany in 2014.
They have brought the case under universal jurisdiction laws that allow Germany to try crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. International lawyers have said they believe it is the first case anywhere against suspected officials in Assad’s government for such crimes.
Attempts by Western powers to set up an international tribunal for Syria have been blocked by Russia and China at the UN Security Council. Syria is also not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
About a dozen Syrian refugees and human rights campaigners held banners outside the court reading, ‘Assad’s Syria is a torture state’ and ‘Assad to The Hague’.
Campaigners and survivors hope the trial will open the door for similar processes in other European countries such as Norway, which have similar universal jurisdiction laws and where former Syrian security service members are believed to live.
“It was a huge challenge for our clients to come out and talk about these crimes for the first time ever,” said lawyer Patrick Kroker, head of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which is supporting 16 Syrians in the proceedings.
“We hope they are being heard worldwide and that there is a first trial which hopefully sends a signal to Damascus.”
German court opens first Syria torture trial
https://arab.news/6cnpg
German court opens first Syria torture trial
- Campaigners have hailed the process as a first step toward justice for thousands of Syrians who say they were tortured in government facilities
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
