by Patty Debonitas
Today a court in Koblenz, Germany has sentenced a Syrian intelligence official, Anwar Raslan, to life in prison for his crimes against humanity as the head of a secret service office, branch 251 in Damascus and its adjoining prison. He is responsible for the torture of over 4000 people, sexual assault and at least 30 deaths between 2011 and 2012 when he defected and fled Syria.
Raslan is not the only criminal who thought he got away with murder. 1200 km north of Koblenz, across the Baltic Sea, in a prison in Stockholm, sits Hamid Nouri who has been charged with crimes against humanity for his involvement in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in Iran in 1988. Nouri came on a private visit to Sweden and was arrested at the airport.
Raslan and Nouri probably never thought that they would have to face justice for what they did, and it is not only these two criminals who are standing trial but the regimes they are part of and that are in power to this day.
Invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction whereby prosecutors can bring charges against individuals, regardless of where the crimes were committed, is a long overdue sign that the wall of silent complicity by governments across the world is crumbling, so that one day, not too far in the future, one by one, the members of the regimes of murder and destruction will be brought to justice with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
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