Dutch court jails Assad accomplice for 26 years for torture

The district court in The Hague has sentenced a 58-year-old Syrian man to 26 years in prison for crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, committed in Syria during the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The court found that the man had been head of the interrogation unit of the National Defence Force (NDF), a pro-Assad militia, and that in 2013 and 2014 he tortured detainees – and ordered others to do so – at three detention centres near Salamiyah, in western Syria.

Nine victims gave evidence over recent weeks. The court convicted the man of 19 offences against eight of them, including one rape, and acquitted him over a ninth victim because it could not establish that he had been her interrogator.

“The defendant dehumanised the victims and degraded them to the utmost,” the court said, adding that he had insulted and disparaged them again during the hearings.

The man settled with his family in Druten, in Gelderland, and was arrested at his home in 2023 after the national crime squad’s international crimes team was tipped off. He denied involvement, saying he had worked as a civil servant.

The case was brought under universal jurisdiction, which allows Dutch courts to try serious international crimes wherever they were committed. Prosecutors had sought 30 years; both they and the man can still appeal.