A court in Germany found a former Syrian security officer guilty on Thursday of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. He is the highest-ranking Syrian official to be held accountable for abuses committed by the government during a decade of civil war.

The former officer, Anwar Raslan, was accused of overseeing a detention centre where prosecutors said at least 4,000 people were tortured and nearly 60 were killed.

The verdict marks a watershed moment for an international network of lawyers, human rights activists and Syrian war survivors who have struggled for years to bring officials who participated in the violence to justice.

Through nearly 11 years of civil war, the Syrian government bombed residential neighbourhoods, used poison gas and tortured countless detainees in state lockups, but until now, no high-level officials had been held accountable for these acts, which human rights lawyers describe as war crimes.

Raslan’s guilty verdict, they say, bolsters the ability of European courts to pursue similar cases while sending a message to war criminals around the world that they could one day face consequences.

“This is the first time that members of the Assad regime have had to stand trial before an ordinary criminal court,” said Stefanie Bock, the director of the International Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials at the University of Marburg in Germany. “This sends a clear message to the world that certain crimes will not go unpunished.”

But while Raslan, a former colonel, held a high rank in a Syrian intelligence service, he was more of a cog than a pillar in the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

(New York Times News Service)