Frankfurt (Afp) — A German court will rule Monday on the case of a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity under former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Alaa Mousa, 40, is accused of torturing detainees at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs on 18 occasions between 2011 and 2012, including setting fire to a teenage boy’s genitals.
The accused is also alleged to have administered a lethal injection to a patient who had resisted being beaten, according to federal prosecutors.
Prosecutors have asked judges at the higher regional court in Frankfurt to hand down a life sentence in the case, which comes to a conclusion after Assad’s ouster in December.
The accused denies all the charges against him.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 on a visa for highly skilled workers at the same time as hundreds of thousands of Syrians were fleeing the civil war at home.
He continued to practice medicine in Germany, working as an orthopedic doctor until he was arrested in June 2020.
A former employer told German media they knew nothing of his past in Syria’s military hospitals, and that colleagues described him as someone who was “unremarkable.”
According to prosecutors, Mousa worked at military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, where political opponents detained by the government were brought for treatment.
Instead of receiving medical assistance, the patients were tortured and “not infrequently killed,” they said.
In one case, Mousa is accused of pouring flammable liquid on a prisoner’s wounds before setting them on fire and kicking him in the face so hard that three of his teeth had to be replaced.