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Life condemnation handed to Alaa Mousa highlights the ‘brutality of Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime’.
Published On 16 Jun 2025
A German tribunal has handed down a beingness condemnation to a Syrian doc convicted of committing acts of torture arsenic portion of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown connected dissent.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court imposed the condemnation connected Alaa Mousa connected Monday, ruling that the doctor’s actions formed portion of the Assad regime’s “inhumane and repressive” run against absorption figures.
The tribunal had recovered the 40-year-old blameworthy of crimes against humanity, including execution and torture, successful transportation with acts committed during Syria’s civilian warfare betwixt 2011 and 2012.
Presiding justice Christoph Koller said the verdict underscored the “brutality of Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime”.
The trial, which ran for much than 3 years, was 1 of the astir important cases brought nether Germany’s rule of cosmopolitan jurisdiction, which allows superior crimes committed overseas to beryllium prosecuted domestically.
Mousa was accused of torturing patients astatine subject hospitals successful Damascus and Homs, wherever governmental prisoners were regularly brought for expected treatment, connected 18 occasions.
He had denied the charges during the trial, which came to a adjacent months aft al-Assad was deposed successful December 2024.
‘Slaughterhouse’
Prosecutors said alternatively than receiving aesculapian treatment, detainees were alternatively subjected to horrific abuse, with immoderate dying arsenic a result.
Witnesses described galore acts of terrible cruelty, including Mousa pouring flammable liquid connected a prisoner’s wounds earlier mounting them alight and kicking the antheral successful the face, shattering his teeth.
In different incident, the doc was accused of injecting a detainee with a fatal substance for refusing to beryllium beaten.
One erstwhile captive described the Damascus infirmary wherever helium was held arsenic a “slaughterhouse”.
Mousa arrived successful Germany successful 2015 connected a skilled-worker visa and continued practising medicine arsenic an orthopaedic doc until his arrest successful 2020. Colleagues reportedly said they had nary cognition of his past, with 1 describing him arsenic “unremarkable”.
During the trial, which opened successful 2022, Mousa denied personally harming patients but admitted witnessing abuse.
He claimed helium was powerless to intervene, saying: “I felt atrocious for them, but I couldn’t accidental anything, oregon it would person been maine alternatively of the patient.”
Source:
Al Jazeera and quality agencies