THE TRIAL OF AL-GHRAIB
On 24 February 2021, a German court convicted former Syrian regime official Eyad Al-Gharib of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. Al-Gharib, 44, was found to have helped arrest at least 30 people during the 2011 anti-government protests, before delivering them to a secret prison in Damascus where they were detained and tortured. Imposing a sentence of four years and six months, the Koblenz court drew upon evidence gathered from victim testimonies, Al-Gharib’s own statement, official regime documentation, and thousands of images leaked by a military defector codenamed ‘Caesar’. Initially a sports instructor within the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate (GID), in 2011 Al-Gharib was reassigned to a unit tasked with tracking down protesters and transporting them to Al Khatib prison (also known as Branch 251). He defected and fled the country in 2013, arriving in Germany to claim asylum five years later. In his defence, lawyers argued that the former intelligence officer feared reprisals should he refuse to carry out superior orders: his actions were borne out of necessity.
Whilst pleas of ‘only following orders’ may immediately call to mind the infamous defence submitted by Holocaust abettor Adolf Eichmann during the Nuremberg trials, the similarities stop there. Al-Gharib’s conviction is effectively the antithesis of a post-war reckoning, and it would be an affront to the Syrian people to perceive it as such. As noted by the prosecution, Al-Gharib was a ‘cog in the wheel’: he assisted, but was by no means instrumental to the brutal regime of long-standing President Bashar Al-Assad. He stood trial alongside his superior Anwar Raslan, who - although accused of overseeing the torture of 4,000 people resulting in the death of at least 58 - is still a relatively small fish.
NO JUSTICE WITHOUT PEACE?
The arrests of both men in 2019 were not the result of extensive planning on the part of German intelligence or law enforcement agencies. Moreover, they arose almost by coincidence after Raslan came face to face with one of his past victims in a Berlin grocery shop. Anwar Al-Bunni, who, like Raslan, fled Syria to seek asylum in Germany, recognised his former tormentor though initially struggled to place him. A prominent human rights lawyer, Al-Bunni played a crucial role in compiling evidence for the prosecution. Speaking to The Guardian, he said of Raslan: “I don’t hate him as a person. I know the problem is the system”.
But the system remains fully operative. Unlike the trials in Nuremberg which followed the Nazi defeat and the liberation of inmates held in concentration camps, human rights abuses in Syria persist. Giving evidence anonymously, a Syrian government employee told the court of his recruitment to work on mass graves near Damascus. Bodies, he said, came from Branch 251 and the notorious Saydnaya military prison situated just outside the capital. It is striking that both of these torture facilities remain active, with bribes acquired from families of prisoners continuing to line the pockets of corrupt regime officials. Those giving the orders executed by Eyad Al-Gharib and Anwar Raslan are still in power. Perhaps overly cynically, there seems to be an almost tokenistic quality to their prosecutions, given that the very infrastructure used by the regime to detain and torture its detractors remains in place.
This is not to say that Syrians should be expected to wait for the dust to settle until justice can be done: whilst the contrary may be true, peace need not be a prerequisite for justice. Indeed, caution should be heeded so as to not repeat past mistakes. In Lebanon, for example, there has been no accountability for war crimes committed during the civil war, which saw approximately 100,000 killed and 17,000 disappeared. This is largely owing to the adoption of a general amnesty law in 1991 which has since fed into political instability and allowed grievances to fester.
In this sense, Al-Gharib’s prosecution may serve as a beacon of hope for Syrians. It is a powerful show of solidarity, and the first in the world relating to the dictatorship which has left more than 400,000 dead and over 11 million displaced. “History has been made,” said Al-Bunni. “The first verdict against a member of the Syrian regime’s torture and murder machine is a verdict against the whole regime, not just against one individual. It gives hope that justice is possible.” Lawyer for the plaintiffs Patrick Kroker stated that: “The world has taken note and is starting to hold [the Syrian regime] to account. For Syrians who took to the streets 10 years ago, it shows the struggle is not over. Syria’s activists have been squashed, but they will never give up, and one day the fight for justice and democracy will be taken back to the country.”
The prosecution is certainly a step in the right direction, but Syrians deserve more. The international community must be wary not to allow successful prosecutions brought by individual states to mask the need for a concerted effort to deliver real and effective transitional justice. Equally, individual states should be careful not to pin regime sins on low-ranking officials such as Al-Gharib. It is worth remembering that regime officials who find themselves in foreign countries are generally those who chose to defect. This is not an insignificant consideration given that Assad’s rule is largely characterised by forced conscriptions, with refusal to undertake military service harshly punished. Syrians have every right and reason to celebrate the prosecutions of individuals such as Al-Gharib, but defectors must not be inadvertently made scapegoats for a system that continues to operate with impunity.
PROSPECTS OF PROSECUTION
As the Syria conflict nears its 10th anniversary, Assad’s grip on power is no closer to yielding. What’s more, the President and his cronies remain effectively untouchable for war crime prosecutors. Having never signed up as a member of the International Criminal Court, the tribunal has no jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed in Syria. The only way to circumvent this obstacle is for the United Nations Security Council to make a referral, as was done for crimes committed in Libya and more recently Darfur. But despite a 2014 attempt by the Security Council to refer Syria to the ICC, Russia and China somewhat predictably cast their vetoes to block the proposed resolution.
Faced with this impasse, the United Nations created the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM). Since 2016, IIIM has been collecting and analysing evidence of human rights violations in Syria with a view to assisting any eventual criminal proceedings, be they in national or international courts. The Mechanism, along with other international, European, and Syrian organisations, have amassed an abundance of compelling evidence against the Syrian intelligence and security apparatus, which was effectively trialled for the first time in Koblenz. Stephen Rapp, former US ambassador for war crimes issues, declared that the evidence against the regime is “better than (…) we had against Milosevic in Yugoslavia (…) even better than we had against the Nazis at Nuremberg, because the Nazis didn’t actually take individual pictures of each of their victims with identifying information on them”.
Anwar Raslan’s trial is set to conclude in October. As for Al-Gharib, the ‘superior orders’ defence was not enough to exculpate him, though documentary evidence proved his low ranking. The defected officer is ultimately a figure of very minor significance, and as more and more European countries bring prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the focus should not be swayed from holding Assad and his inner circle accountable. Notwithstanding Al-Gharib’s relative insignificance within the wider intelligence apparatus, his conviction is more than symbolic. It is proof that the evidence being amassed is capable of standing up to scrutiny in a court of law. This in itself should ignite momentum for prosecutions of higher-ranking officials, and in time Assad himself.
Zoe recently graduated with an MA in Law from the University of Law, London. She has a strong interest in human rights and national security, having spent two years at a conflict resolution NGO in Brussels. She currently works as a paralegal at a London based firm where she assists with age dispute claims brought by unaccompanied minors.