German court sentences Syrian intelligence officer to life in prison for war crimes

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German judges sentenced a former Syrian intelligence officer to life in prison in a historic verdict - guilty of crimes against humanity. The trial took place in the German city of Koblenz. The defendant, 58-year-old Anwar Raslan, was convicted of overseeing the murder of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 people in a Damascus prison. NPR's Deborah Amos was in the courtroom.

DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: The verdict was seen as a victory for Syrian torture survivors, the very people that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had tried to silence in a civil uprising that turned in to a war. Some 50 Syrian survivors, many who braved threats to families back home, gave evidence of brutal torture, humiliation and starvation in a prison known as Branch 251 in a residential neighborhood in Damascus flanked by a grocery store and a pharmacy.

The defendant, Anwar Raslan, a Syrian intelligence officer, was in charge of interrogation there. He told the court he never tortured anyone.

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But Wassim Mukdad says he suffered there for months after his arrest in 2012. He's a Syrian musician now based in Berlin, a co-plaintiff in the case. Our suffering was not in vain, he said soon after the verdict was announced. He had a front-row courtroom seat to witness the final session today.

WASSIM MUKDAD: This verdict say it loud and clear that the criminals will pay for their crimes sooner or later.

AMOS: Sooner for Anwar Raslan, as the judges found the brutality systematic in 4,000 cases of torture, a ruling that had special significance for Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni. The evidence showed Raslan didn't act alone. And for Bunni, the Koblenz verdict was an indictment of the Assad regime itself.

ANWAR AL-BUNNI: I care about the verdicts mentioned as crimes against humanity. It's committed by state, by the regime.

AMOS: Another unprecedented aspect of this trial - the prosecution of war crimes committed by a regime still in power which denies it commits torture despite widespread evidence. In the short term, this verdict will change little in Damascus, says Mazen Darwish, a torture victim and a lawyer. But now, he says, there is an official record, a court record that refutes regime claims.

MAZEN DARWISH: Now there is a legal decision from independent court say, yes, this is true. This is the first time we have this kind of decision.

AMOS: There were other firsts in Koblenz, precedents for future trials, but still much to unpack from the proceedings today. One is Raslan's life sentence. Under German law, a life sentence means the possibility of parole in 15 years. Anna Oehmichen, a lawyer who worked on behalf of four Syrian plaintiffs, says the court didn't choose the harshest option.

ANNA OEHMICHEN: They did not establish special gravity of guilt, which they could have done as well.

AMOS: The judges may have considered that Raslan released some prisoners, and he defected from the regime in 2012. It could also mean that the court considered him a cog in a bigger wheel and left room for harsher sentences in future trials, she says.

OEHMICHEN: It is not the worst that there's still some leeway up that others will get a harder punishment than him.

AMOS: The witnesses and the German lawyers who support them say this is a first step, hardly justice but a sign that accountability may be possible. There are more trials scheduled. But on this day, sunny and cold in a western town in Germany, Syrian torture survivors and their families celebrated a sliver of hope.

Deborah Amos, NPR News, Koblenz, Germany.

(SOUNDBITE OF NANEUM'S "STRATIFICATION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.