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What a landmark conviction for Syrian war crimes means for victims' relatives and international justice

CBC News | Posted: January 17, 2022 9:58 AM | Last Updated: January 17, 2022

Image | Germany Syria Torture Trial

Caption: From left, Samaa Mahmoud, Mariam Alhallak and Yasmen Almashan hold pictures of relatives who died in Syria, are shown in front of the court in Koblenz, Germany, on Jan. 13. A German court has convicted a former Syrian secret police officer of crimes against humanity for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail near Damascus a decade ago. The verdict Thursday in the landmark trial has been keenly anticipated by Syrians who suffered abuse or lost relatives in the country's long-running conflict. (Martin Meissner/The Associated Press)

On Thursday, a former Syrian colonel in Bashar al-Assad's forces was convicted in a court in Germany for crimes against humanity.
Anwar Raslan was sentenced to life in prison for overseeing the murder of at least 27 people and the torture of at least 4000 in a Damascus prison. The case marks the world's first criminal prosecution of state-sponsored torture in Syria.
Today, we hear from Wafa Ali Mustafa, the daughter of one man believed to be forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, and Sara Kayyali, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who has been investigating human rights abuses in Syria, who says while this conviction is important, "justice doesn't start and end in European courts."
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