A German Court has sentenced a Syrian doctor, Alaa Mousa, to life imprisonment over crimes against humanity, including torture and murder, committed while working in military hospitals under Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The crimes committed by Alaa Mousa, 40, during the Syrian civil war were “part of a brutal reaction by Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime”, said the presiding judge at the higher regional court in Frankfurt, Christoph Koller.
Mousa was accused of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs on 18 occasions between 2011 and 2012, including setting fire to a teenage boy’s genitals and delivering a lethal injection to a detainee who resisted a beating.
The court also found Mousa guilty of murder, torture, and war crimes, committed between 2011 and 2012.
The presiding judge, Christoph Koller, described Mousa’s crimes as part of a brutal reaction by Assad’s dictatorial regime.
The court heard testimony from colleagues and detainees who recognized Mousa and described the atrocities committed at the military hospitals.
One witness described the military hospital where he was held as a “slaughterhouse”.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 on a visa for highly skilled workers and worked as an orthopaedic doctor until his arrest in June 2020.
Germany had tried several supporters of Assad’s regime under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, which allowed for serious crimes to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a different country.
The first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria under the Assad government opened in 2020 in Koblenz, Germany.
A former army colonel was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in jail in 2022.
