Alaa M was found guilty of crimes committed at military hospitals in Syria at the start of the country's civil war. The 40-year-old later moved to Germany, where he worked as an orthopaedic surgeon.
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A German court has sentenced a Syrian doctor to life imprisonment for killing two people and torturing nine others in his homeland between 2011 and 2012.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court delivered the verdict after a trial that lasted almost three and a half years.
The 40-year-old defendant, identified only as Alaa M due to German privacy law, was accused of committing crimes against perceived opponents of the Assad regime at military hospitals in Homs and Mezzeh at the start of the Syrian civil war.
The man, who later worked as an orthopaedic surgeon in northern Hesse, was detained in Germany in 2020 and was charged with murder, torture and crimes against humanity.
Alaa M pleaded not guilty, alleging that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
However, the Frankfurt court established that the particular gravity of his guilt, meaning that he is unlikely to be released after 15 years, as is often the case in Germany when people receive life sentences.
Christoph Koller, the presiding judge, told the German news agency dpa that the doctor had sadistic tendencies.
“Above all, the accused enjoyed harming people that seemed inferior and low-value to him,” Koller said.
"No torturer can be certain of impunity, no matter where he is," he added.
Koller said the Syrian doctor's sentencing would not have been possible without the willingness and courage of witnesses to share the details of their suffering.
Alaa M travelled to Germany in 2015 and worked as an orthopaedic surgeon in clinics in Hessisch Lichtenau (Werra-Meißner) and Bad Wildungen (Waldeck-Frankenberg).
His trial began in 2022, two years after his arrest, which occurred after witnesses recognised him from a documentary about Homs.