German Court Rejects Appeal of Former Syrian Secret Police Officer

On Monday, the German Federal Court announced that it had upheld the conviction of a former Syrian police officer who had committed crimes against humanity while working for the Assad regime. 

In 2019, while seeking asylum in Germany, German authorities first arrested Anwar Raslan, who led a unit within Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate. 

A regional court based in the western German city of Koblenz concluded in 2022 that the former colonel was responsible for overseeing the “systematic and brutal torture” of more than 4,000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012.  

According to the earlier ruling, Raslan supervised interrogations at a prison facility known as Al-Khatib, or Branch 251, located just outside of Damascus.  

The court stated that he was directly responsible for at least 27 of the at least 58 deaths that occurred at Branch 251 during his tenure as commander. 

In 2021, the Koblenz court also convicted Eyad al-Gharib, a former junior officer associated with Raslan, of being an accessory to similar crimes. 

The German Court of Justice denied Raslan’s appeal on the grounds that there was no “legal error to the detriment of the accused.”