Life sentence handed to Alaa Mousa highlights the โbrutality of Assadโs dictatorial, unjust regimeโ.
A German court has handed down a life sentence to a Syrian doctor convicted of committing acts of torture as part ofย Bashar al-Assadโs brutal crackdown on dissent.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court imposed the sentence on Alaa Mousa on Monday, ruling that the doctorโs actions formed part of the Assad regimeโs โinhumane and repressiveโ campaign against opposition figures.
The court had found the 40-year-old guilty of crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, in connection with acts committed during Syriaโs civil war between 2011 and 2012.
Presiding judge Christoph Koller said the verdict underscored the โbrutality of Assadโs dictatorial, unjust regimeโ.
The trial, which ran for more than three years, was one of the most significant cases brought under Germanyโs principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows serious crimes committed abroad to be prosecuted domestically.
Mousa was accused of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs, where political prisoners were regularly brought for supposed treatment, on 18 occasions.
He had denied the charges during the trial, which came to a close months after al-Assad was deposed in December 2024.
โSlaughterhouseโ
Prosecutors said rather than receiving medical treatment, detainees were instead subjected to horrific abuse, with some dying as a result.
Witnesses described numerous acts of severe cruelty, including Mousa pouring flammable liquid on a prisonerโs wounds before setting them alight and kicking the man in the face, shattering his teeth.
In another incident, the doctor was accused of injecting a detainee with a fatal substance for refusing to be beaten.
One former prisoner described the Damascus hospital where he was held as a โslaughterhouseโ.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 on a skilled-worker visa and continued practising medicine as an orthopaedic doctor until his arrest in 2020. Colleagues reportedly said they had no knowledge of his past, with one describing him as โunremarkableโ.
During the trial, which opened in 2022, Mousa denied personally harming patients but admitted witnessing abuse.
He claimed he was powerless to intervene, saying: โI felt sorry for them, but I couldnโt say anything, or it would have been me instead of the patient.โ
