Former intelligence officer Eyad al-Gharib, 44, has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison by a court in the German city of Koblenz to help crimes against humanity.
Gharib was found guilty of transporting thirty protesters detained, despite knowing of the systematic torture in the prison to which the prisoners were sent, according to prosecutors. The protesters were allegedly beaten on their way to jail.
Both Raslan and Gharib left the regime at the end of 2012.
Raslan, a high-ranking former intelligence official, is still on trial. He is accused of overseeing the torture of at least 4,000 prisoners during Syria’s uprising. At least 58 of the prisoners were killed. Rape and sexual assault allegedly occurred in at least one case.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has been repeatedly accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the course of the nearly ten-year war. But efforts to establish an international tribunal have been hampered by Russian and Chinese vetoes at the United Nations Security Council.
Syrian officials have repeatedly denied the allegations, insisting they are targeting terrorists and not peaceful protesters.
“Today is an exceptional day in the lives of Syrians,” Amer Matar, a 33-year-old Syrian man who said he was tortured by Raslan, told CNN. “This is a very important message for us as Syrians that justice can really be achieved, even in a very remote place like Germany, even if it is partial, and to specific people.”
The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), investigators who provided documentary evidence used by the prosecutor, described Tuesday’s ruling as ‘historic’.
“This is a historic statement,” CIJA director Nerma Jelacic told CNN. ‘Not only because it is the first to convict a Syrian government official of crimes against humanity, but also because he acknowledges that his crimes were part of a widespread and systematic attack orchestrated by the highest bodies of Assad’s regime .
“This is only the first of many other trials and investigations we support,” Jelacic added. “It’s been almost ten years since the crimes Eyad A. [al-Gharib] convicted of those who perpetrated in the early days of the uprising when the regime struck bare-armed protesters. ‘
Since 2012, CIJA has been collecting evidence of the Syrian government’s alleged crimes from investigators known as ‘document hunters’. These are Syrians recruited and trained by former investigators and lawyers of war crimes to smuggle thousands of government documents from Syrian war zones.
The human rights group Amnesty International has called on more countries to follow the example of Germany. ‘We call on more states to follow the example of Germany by investigating and prosecuting individuals suspected of committing war crimes or other crimes under international law in Syria by their national courts under the principle of’ universal jurisdiction ‘, “said Lynn Maalouf, the organization’s deputy director, for the Middle East and North Africa.
Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, who is seen as one of the driving forces behind the Koblenz trial, called the verdict “a message to all criminals still committing the most heinous crimes in Syria and to remind them that the time of impunity is over, and there is no safe place to flee to. ‘
CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh and Eyad Kourdi contributed to this report.