{"id":146549,"date":"2025-06-16T09:58:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T05:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/146549-german-court-jails-syrian-torture-doctor-for-life.html"},"modified":"2025-06-16T17:29:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T15:29:27","slug":"life-sentence-syrian-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/146549-life-sentence-syrian-doctor.html","title":{"rendered":"Life sentence for a Syrian doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alaa Moussa was on trial for multiple crimes against detainees in military hospitals in Damascus and Homs during the Syrian civil war. On 16 June, a German court sentenced him to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

A German court on Monday sentenced a Syrian doctor to life in prison for crimes against humanity for torturing detainees at military hospitals under former ruler Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crimes committed by Alaa Mousa, 40, during the Syrian civil war were \"part of a brutal reaction by Assad's dictatorial, unjust regime\", said Christoph Koller, the presiding judge at the higher regional court in Frankfurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany has tried several Assad supporters under the legal principle of \"universal jurisdiction<\/a>\", which allows for serious crimes to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a different country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The civil war erupted in 2011 after Assad's brutal repression of anti-government protests, sparking a spiralling conflict that drew in regional actors and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mousa was accused by federal prosecutors of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs on 18 occasions between 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one instance, Mousa was said to have set fire to the genitals of a teenage boy and in another case to have delivered a lethal injection to a detainee who resisted a beating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as crimes against humanity, the court found Mousa guilty of murder, torture and war crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had denied the charges in the trial, which came to a close a few months after Assad was ousted in December 2024.<\/p>\n\n\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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued to practise medicine in Germany, working as an orthopaedic doctor until he was arrested in June 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

'Slaughterhouse'<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to federal prosecutors, Mousa worked at military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, where political opponents detained by the government were brought for treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of receiving medical assistance, the patients were tortured and \"not infrequently killed\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one case, Mousa was 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other inmates were kicked and beaten, sometimes with medical tools, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n\n\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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One former inmate said he had been forced to carry the bodies of patients who died after being injected by Mousa, Der Spiegel reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another witness said the military hospital where he was held in Damascus had been known as a \"slaughterhouse\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the opening of the trial in 2022<\/a>, Mousa told the court he had witnessed beatings but had been scared to speak out.<\/p>\n\n\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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

'Witnesses threatened'<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As well as the difficulties presented by the 10-year gap between the crimes and the start of the trial, Koller said Assad's government had \"attempted to influence\" proceedings before it was toppled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confidential information was passed to Syria, \"so that relatives of witnesses were threatened\" and \"probably even abducted\", Koller said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria under the Assad government opened in 2020 in Koblenz, western Germany.<\/p>\n\n\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\n\n

\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t
Recommended reading<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t
\"A<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\tGermany: When Syrian doctors became part of Assad\u2019s terror\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alaa Moussa was on trial for multiple crimes against detainees in military hospitals in Damascus and Homs during the Syrian civil war. On 16 June, a German court sentenced him to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":146562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,2801],"tags":[2653,2772],"ji_location":[2239,2499],"class_list":["post-146549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-feed","category-universal-jurisdiction","tag-crime-against-humanity","tag-judgment","ji_location-germany","ji_location-syria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLife sentence for a Syrian doctor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Alaa Moussa was on trial for multiple crimes against detainees in military hospitals in Damascus and Homs during the Syrian civil war. 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