The trial of a 47-year-old Syrian man began Friday in the northern German port city of Hamburg in connection with possible war crimes committed by a Syrian government militia between 2012 and 2015.
The suspect is a 47-year-old Syrian man who entered Germany in February 2016 and was arrested on August 2 last year in the northwestern city of Bremen, a spokesman for the Hanze Higher Regional Court said.
At the start of the proceedings, the man’s lawyers complained to chairman Norbert Sakuth that their client had not been able to dress properly. The suspect, dressed in loose gray clothing and slippers, was then allowed to return to the pretrial detention prison and change clothes. The trial started two hours late.
As one of the leaders of the Shabiha militia in the al-Tadamon district of the Syrian capital, the suspect is said to have participated in the abuse and enslavement of civilians, as well as looting.
The militia is said to have arbitrarily detained people at checkpoints in Damascus to extort ransoms, force them into forced labor or torture them.
The militia, working with a branch of the military secret service, is believed to have used violence to suppress opposition efforts.
According to federal prosecutors, in September 2013 a citizen was tied up and blindfolded and taken to a prison. In a cell, the suspect allegedly punched him in the face and ordered his subordinates to beat the man with plastic pipes for hours.
As he fell to the ground, one of the militia members kicked his head so hard that he hit the wall and suffered a bleeding laceration, prosecutors say. The reason for the abuse was that the man had demanded money from the suspect’s family for workers’ services.
In other cases, the militia captured civilians and forced them to carry sandbags to the front lines. The prisoners came under fire. In addition, they were not given food and water, the Public Prosecution Service says.
The suspect punched one man to the ground during the arrest, adding that he then kicked the citizen, grabbed him by the hair and pushed his head onto the sidewalk.
The Shabiha militia, working with a branch of military intelligence, was believed to have violently suppressed opposition efforts. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, members of this intelligence unit killed at least 47 civilians in mass executions on April 16 and October 16, 2013.
There are video recordings of the massacres showing the person believed to be responsible, the court spokesman said.
In another video, this Secret Service employee is seen riding a wheel loader with the suspect. The recordings helped investigators identify the 47-year-old. However, they could not prove that the suspects had participated in the massacres.
Federal prosecutors have charged the suspect with 21 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. During the arraignment, the two prosecutors emphasized that all warring parties in the Syrian civil war had committed the most serious violations of international humanitarian law since late 2011.
After the charges were read, the 47-year-old stated he may comment on the allegations at a later date.
His two lawyers demanded that key witnesses for the prosecution be named and located. Otherwise, they requested a stay of the trial. The Senate for State Security rejected this.
Syria’s military intelligence had established a “regime of terror” and the witnesses and their relatives in Syria and other countries would be in immediate danger if their names were mentioned, Judge Sakuth explained.
The trial in Hamburg is not the first trial in Germany for human rights crimes committed by Syrian government forces. In early 2021, the Koblenz Higher Regional Court sentenced a former chief interrogator in a Damascus prison to life imprisonment.
The court was convinced that he was responsible for the torture of at least 4,000 people and the deaths of 27 people.
A co-suspected intelligence officer was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in February 2021 for complicity in a crime against humanity.
