COPENHAGEN, Denmark: At least seven people have been arrested in Germany and Sweden on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Syria in 2012-2014, authorities in the two countries said Wednesday.
In a coordinated effort that also involved the European Union judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, the EU police agency Europol, and several other unnamed European countries, four were arrested in Germany and three in Sweden.
The German federal prosecutor said that those arrested in Germany were “strongly suspected of killing and attempting to kill civilians.” Some of those arrested also were suspected of torture.
The four arrested in Germany are known only as Jihad A., Mahmoud A., Sameer S. and Wael S. and had been affiliated with the Free Palestine Movement, an armed militia in Syria, since early 2011. German prosecutors did not give their last names in line with privacy rules. Sweden did not identify the three it arrested.
At the time, the militia exercised control over Damascus’ mostly Palestinian district of Al-Yarmouk on behalf of the Syrian regime, Germany’s federal prosecutor said. Since July 2013, the Syrian regime had cordoned off the area completely, resulting in a shortage of food, water, and medical supplies.
Among other crimes, all suspects allegedly participated in the violent crackdown of a peaceful anti-government protest in Al-Yarmouk on July 13, 2012, specifically targeting civilian protesters by shooting at them. Six individuals died while others were seriously injured, the German statement said.
Germany’s federal prosecutor alleged that some of them also abused civilians from Al-Yarmouk severely and repeatedly. The events occurred between mid-2012 and 2014.
In one case, an individual was handed over to the Syrian Military Intelligence Service, which reportedly incarcerated and tortured him. In another case, a woman was allegedly forced to pay with her family jewels for the release of her minor son, and was threatened with rape.
Three of those arrested — Jihad A., Sameer S. and Wael S. — are stateless Syrian Palestinians, while Mazhar J. is a Syrian national.
The four were arrested in Berlin, in Frankenthal and near Boizenburg, in southwestern and northeast Germany, respectively. The home of another suspect, whose name was not given and who was not arrested, was searched in the western city of Essen.
They are due to be brought before an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice, who will read out their arrest warrants and decide on pre-trial detention. The arraignment will take place Monday and Tuesday, the prosecutor’s statement said.
In Sweden, the Prosecution Authority gave no details regarding those arrested. The prosecution authority said it must be decided before noon Saturday whether they should be detained or released.
At least 7 arrested in Germany and Sweden on suspicion of committing war crimes in Syria
https://arab.news/yn6n2
At least 7 arrested in Germany and Sweden on suspicion of committing war crimes in Syria
- In one case, an individual was handed over to the Syrian Military Intelligence Service
- Three of those arrested — Jihad A., Sameer S. and Wael S. — are stateless Syrian Palestinians
Women main victims of Sudan conflict abuses: minister to AFP
- Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF
- Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025
PORT SUDAN: Women are the main victims of abuse in Sudan’s war, facing “the world’s worst” sexual violence and other crimes committed with impunity, a rights activist turned social affairs minister for the army-backed government told AFP.
The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal conflict since April 2023 that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced around 11 million and been marked by widespread sexual violence.
Sulaima Ishaq Al-Khalifa said abuses against women routinely accompanied looting and attacks, with reports of rape often perpetrated as “the family witnessed” the crime.
“There is no age limit. A woman of 85 could be raped, a child of one year could be raped,” the trained psychologist told AFP at her home in Port Sudan.
The longtime women’s rights activist, recently appointed to the government, said that women were also being subjected to sexual slavery and trafficked to neighboring countries, alongside forced marriages arranged to avoid shame.
Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF, who she says use it “as a weapon of war” and for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing.”
Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025 — a figure that does not include atrocities documented in western Darfur and the neighboring Kordofan region from late October onwards.
“It’s about... humiliating people, forcing them to leave their houses and places and cities. And also breaking... the social fabrics,” Khalifa said.
“When you are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, that means you want to extend... the war forever,” because it feeds a “sense of revenge,” she added.
- ‘War crimes’ -
A report by the SIHA Network, an activist group that documents abuses against women in the Horn of Africa, found that more than three-quarters of recorded cases involved rape, with 87 percent attributed to the RSF.
The United Nations has repeatedly raised alarm over what it describes as targeted attacks on non?Arab communities in Darfur, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened a formal investigation into “war crimes” by both sides.
Briefing the UN Security Council in mid-January, ICC deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said investigators had uncovered evidence of an “organized, calculated campaign” in El-Fasher — the army’s last stronghold in Darfur captured by the RSF in late October.
The campaign, Khan added, involved mass rapes and executions “on a massive scale,” sometimes “filmed and celebrated” by the perpetrators and “fueled by a sense of complete impunity.”
Darfur endured a brutal wave of atrocities in the early 2000s, and a former Janjaweed commander — from the militia structure that later evolved into the RSF — was recently found guilty by the International Criminal Court of multiple war crimes, including rape.
“What’s happening now is much more ugly. Because the mass rape thing is happening and documented,” said Khalifa.
RSF fighters carrying out the assaults “have been very proud about doing this and they don’t see it as a crime,” she added.
“You feel that they have a green light to do whatever they want.”
In Darfur, several survivors said RSF fighters “have been accusing them of being lesser people, like calling them ‘slaves’, and saying that when I’m attacking you, assaulting you sexually, I’m actually ‘honoring’ you, because I am more educated than you, or (of) more pure blood than you.”
- ‘Torture operation’ -
Women in Khartoum and Darfur, including El-Fasher, have described rapes carried out by a range of foreign nationals.
These were “mercenaries from West Africa, speaking French, including from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, as well as Colombia and Libya” — allegedly fighting alongside the RSF, Khalifa added.
Some victims were abducted and held as sexual slaves, while others were sold through trafficking networks operating across Sudan’s porous borders, said Khalifa.
Many of these cases remain difficult to document because of the collapse of state institutions.
In conservative communities, social stigma also remains a major obstacle to documenting the scale of the abuse.
Families often force victims into marriage to “cover up what happened,” particularly when pregnancies result from rape, according to the minister.
“We call it a torture operation,” she said, describing “frightening” cases in which children and adolescent girls under 18 are forced into marriage.
