Alaa Moussa (L), a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity under the Assad regime, and his lawyers at the opening of his trial in Frankfurt, Germany, on Jan. 19, 2022. (Credit: AFP)
A Syrian doctor accused of torturing opponents of Bashar al-Assad's regime was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday by a German court after a lengthy trial lasting more than three years in Frankfurt.
Alaa Mousa, 40, was accused of torturing detainees at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs on 18 occasions between 2011 and 2012, including setting fire to a teenage boy's genitals.
He was also alleged to have administered a lethal injection to a patient who had resisted being beaten, according to federal prosecutors.
"He killed two people and seriously injured nine others," Judge Christoph Koller said in delivering his verdict, emphasizing that these acts committed in 2011 and 2012 "were part of the brutal reaction of the dictatorial and unjust Assad regime" to the opposition protests.
Denouncing "a massive violation of human rights" by the accused, the judge stated that the verdict was also a way of showing "that the suffering of the victims is not forgotten."
"In addition to the difficulties inherent in a 12-year delay, the Syrian regime tried until its fall [in December 2024] to exert influence over the German proceedings," he said, citing threats against relatives of witnesses. Given the seriousness of the facts, Mousa's life sentence was accompanied by a mandatory sentence for a period not yet defined – which will be decided after 15 years of incarceration.
"No torturer, regardless of where he committed his crime, can be certain of escaping justice. He must always expect to be punished for his actions," Judge Koller stated.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 on a visa for highly skilled workers at the same time as hundreds of thousands of Syrians were fleeing the civil war at home.
He continued to practice medicine in Germany, working as an orthopaedic doctor until he was arrested in June 2020.
A former employer told German media they knew nothing of his past in Syria's military hospitals, and that colleagues described him as someone who was "unremarkable."
Witness statements
According to prosecutors, Mousa worked at military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, where political opponents detained by the government were brought for treatment.
Instead of receiving medical assistance, the patients were tortured and "not infrequently killed," they said.
In one case, Mousa is accused of pouring flammable liquid on a prisoner's wounds before setting them on fire and kicking him in the face so hard that three of his teeth had to be replaced.
He also allegedly doused a teenage boy's genitals in alcohol before setting them alight.
Other inmates were kicked and beaten, sometimes with medical tools, according to prosecutors.
During the trial, the court heard testimony from colleagues and detainees, who said they recognised the accused, according to German weekly Der Spiegel.
One former inmate said he had been forced to carry the bodies of patients who had died after they were injected by Mousa, Der Spiegel reported.
Another witness said the military hospital where he was held in Damascus had been known as a "slaughterhouse."
At the opening of the trial in 2022, Mousa told the court he had witnessed beatings but denied striking patients himself.
The accused, however, said he was too afraid of the military police "in control" at the hospital to speak out.
"I felt sorry for them, but I couldn't say anything, or it would have been me instead of the patient," he said.
Germany has tried several supporters of Assad's regime under the legal principle of "universal jurisdiction," which allows for serious crimes to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a different country.
The first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria under the Assad government opened in Koblenz in 2020.
The accused in the trial, a former army colonel, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in jail in 2022.