\n A German court will rule Monday on the case of a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity under former dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alaa Mousa, 40, is 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n The accused is also alleged to have administered a lethal injection to a patient who had resisted being beaten, according to federal prosecutors.\n<\/p>\n
\n Prosecutors have asked judges at the higher regional court in Frankfurt to hand down a life sentence in the case, which comes to a conclusion after Assad's ouster in December.\n<\/p>\n
\n The accused denies all the charges against him.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n He continued to practise medicine in Germany, working as an orthopaedic doctor until he was arrested in June 2020.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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\".\n<\/p>\n
\n - Witness statements -\n<\/p>\n
\n According to prosecutors, Mousa worked at military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, where political opponents detained by the government were brought for treatment.\n<\/p>\n
\n Instead of receiving medical assistance, the patients were tortured and \"not infrequently killed\", they said.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also allegedly doused a teenage boy's genitals in alcohol before setting them alight.\n<\/p>\n
\n Other inmates were kicked and beaten, sometimes with medical tools, according to prosecutors.\n<\/p>\n
\n During the trial, the court heard testimony from colleagues and detainees, who said they recognised the accused, according to German weekly Der Spiegel.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another witness said the military hospital where he was held in Damascus had been known as a \"slaughterhouse\".\n<\/p>\n
\n At the opening of the trial in 2022, Mousa told the court he had witnessed beatings but denied striking patients himself.\n<\/p>\n
\n The accused however said he was too afraid of the military police \"in control\" at the hospital to speak out.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I felt sorry for them, but I couldn't say anything, or it would have been me instead of the patient,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n The first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria under the Assad government opened in Koblenz in 2020.\n<\/p>\n
\n The accused in the trial, a former army colonel, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in jail in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A German court will rule Monday on the case of a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity under former dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime. Alaa Mousa, 40, is 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. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-146517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n