Conviction of a Syrian man for crimes against humanity upheld by Federal Court of Justice in Germany.
GHRTV
09-05-2022
Grace ATALUI MOKANGO
International Justice and Human Rights Researcher
Global Human Rights Defence
Last Tuesday, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) in Karlsruhe (Germany) rejected Eyad Al-Gharib's appeal against his conviction as an accessory to crimes against humanity committed in Syria. The crimes were engaged in the context of a massive crackdown on dissent by the regime of President Bashar Assad.
On 24 February 2021, Eyad Al-Gharib was sentenced by the German judiciary under its universal jurisdiction to four and a half years in prison for the complicity of crimes against humanity in the first trial related to the abuses attributed to the Bashar Al-Assad regime. The Regional High Court convicted Eyad Al-Gharib of Koblenz of complicity in crimes against humanity because of his involvement as a former member of the Syrian intelligence services. He was found guilty of participating in the arrest in September or October 2011 of at least thirty demonstrators in Douma, near Damascus, and their transfer to a detention centre of the intelligence services, where they were subjected to inhuman treatment and torture, constituting crimes against humanity.
Thus, on 3 May 2022, the High Court found that the conviction and sentence handed down in Koblenz in February 2021 did not contain any legal errors, thus confirming the Koblenz decision and making it indisputable.
Sources and further reading
DW, Germany: Top court upholds Syrian’s conviction as accessory to torture, News, ( 03/05/2022), from: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-top-court-upholds-syrians-conviction-as-accessory-to-torture/a-61673587
Le Monde Avec AFP, En Allemagne, condamnation historique d’un ex-agent syrien pour « complicité de crimes contre l’humanité », Actualités, ( 24/02/2021), from: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/02/24/condamnation-historique-d-un-ex-agent-syrien-pour-complicite-de-crimes-contre-l-humanite_6071041_3210.html
