Syrian doctor denies torture charges in German court

A Syrian doctor on Tuesday denied all charges of crimes against humanity levied against him at the Frankfurt Higher Regional court.

Among a long list of crimes Alaa M. stands accused of gruesome acts, such as dousing the genitals of teenagers with alcohol and setting them on fire, kicking prisoners’ broken arms and legs, and administering injections to victims who protested against mistreatment.

The trial began last Wednesday, with some 13 days of hearings scheduled between then and the end of March.

Alaa M. arrived in Germany in 2015 on a skilled worker’s visa. He had practiced medicine in Germany until his arrest in 2020.

The 36-year-old now faces 18 counts of torturing detainees in Damascus and the western city of Homs between 2011 and 2012. He also faces one murder count for allegedly administering a lethal injection to a prisoner who resisted being beaten, federal prosecutors said. 

The case is among the first of its kind in Germany where atrocities committed by the Syrian regime during the country’s civil war are being tried in a court of law. 

Earlier this month, a German court sentenced a former Syrian colonel to life in jail for overseeing the murders of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 others at a Damascus detention.

Alaa M. ‘felt sorry’ for detainees

The 36-year-old worked at the military hospital in Homs in 2011, after Arab Spring protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime led to a brutal crackdown. 

He took the stand on Tuesday and told judges that a great number of opposition demonstrators were brought in with injuries and that it was a chaotic scene. He said he had worked in several military medical facilities at the time.

He testified that he “felt sorry” for patients who were beaten and blindfolded, but firmly denied taking part in any violence, saying he did not beat any detainees, and “would never” have operated on a patient without anesthesia, as prosecutors accuse him of doing.

“I saw the military secret service beating injured detainees. I felt sorry for them, but I couldn’t say anything, or it would have been me instead of the patient,” he told the court. He also said the military police did not permit him to talk about the patients in anything but a medical capacity, saying in most cases he neither knew their names nor knew what eventually became of them.

Asked whether he felt sympathy for the anti-Assad demonstrators, Alaa M. said neither he nor his family were political activists, adding that while protests began peacefully, they quickly turned more “radical.” 

“I’m against violence on either side,” he said.

jcg/msh (AFP, dpa)

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