A German court has sentenced Syrian doctor Alaa Mousa to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of crimes against humanity, reports RFE.
Alaa Mousa, 40, was convicted of torturing detainees in military hospitals during the rule of Bashar al-Assad. The crimes committed by Mousa during the Syrian civil war were “part of the brutal response of Assad’s dictatorship and unjust regime,” said the presiding judge at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court, Christoph Koller.
Details of the Crimes and Conviction
Mousa was accused of torturing patients in military hospitals in Damascus and Homs. He faced charges for 18 instances of torture between 2011 and 2012. In one case, Mousa reportedly burned the genitals of an adolescent, and in another, he allegedly injected a lethal dose into a detainee who had resisted beatings.
In addition to crimes against humanity, the court also found the defendant guilty of murder, torture, and war crimes. Mousa denied the accusations during the trial, which concluded several months after Assad was overthrown in December 2024.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 with a visa for skilled workers, alongside hundreds of thousands of Syrians who had fled their country due to the the civil war. He continued to work as a doctor in Germany until his arrest in June 2020. According to prosecutors, Mousa had worked in military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, where political opponents held by the government were sent for treatment. However, instead of receiving medical treatment, patients were allegedly “tortured and killed,” prosecutors stated.
During the trial, witnesses, including the defendant’s colleagues and former detainees, identified Mousa as having participated in the torture. At the start of the trial in 2022, Mousa told the court he had witnessed beatings but denied beating patients himself. He claimed he was afraid to speak about what he had seen due to the military police, who he alleged controlled the hospital.
Universal Justice Principle in Germany
In Germany, several supporters of the Assad regime have been prosecuted under the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction.” This principle allows a state to prosecute serious crimes and pursue individuals who have committed these crimes in other countries.
The first trial in the world for crimes committed in Syria during the Assad regime began in 2020 in Germany. The accused, a former army colonel, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
