Syria torture trial: Survivors rejoice over justice

 For victims who suffered detention and torture in the jails of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a historic verdict handed down by a court in Germany provided a small step towards justice.

"The verdict will not fix the broken heart of every mother whose son was killed under torture.

"Nor will it even represent a fraction of the pain we had to endure,'' said Omar Alshogre.

Alshogre who was only 17 when he was locked up in a government intelligence jail in Damascus in 2012 said, he spent three years there.

"But the verdict repairs our hopes that the regime will fall and our freedom will come,'' Alshogre, now 26, added.

On Thursday, a former Syrian colonel was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison by a court in Koblenz in what prosecutors said was the first trial of its kind worldwide.

The former intelligence officer and interrogator, identified only as Anwar R, was tried in Germany under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of possible war crimes committed by foreigners in other states.

"I do not take this verdict to be literal, but, rather, I take it as a representation that brutality equates weakness and that the tools of the regime cannot last much longer,'' Alshogre added.

Now a well-known public speaker and human rights activist, he was among thousands of Syrians who were detained without charges in Syrian intelligence prisons and tortured.

Alongside other detainees, he said he experienced daily torture, including electric shocks and the removal of his fingernails.

Aysha Mustapha, 51, was detained in 2016.

She said she was tortured in intelligence jails in Damascus for three months.

For her, any legal bid to bring al-Assad's thugs to justice offers "a glimpse of hope.''

"Every time I hear about the arrest of one of the regime members who participated in torturing, abusing detainees and committing war crimes against Syrians, I feel that justice still exists.

"I feel that the trial of such people is obligatory wherever they are found,'' Mustapha said.

According to Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 105,000 people have been killed and tortured in al-Assad's jails, while at least 150,000 others are still missing or detained.

"The symbolic value of the verdict is that it is evidence of how trauma drives us to rebuild things that we never thought could be accomplished before,'' Alshogre said.

"This is the start of what will move the dictator from the seat of power to the seat in the court,'' he said from Sweden, where he is now living.