Published by
Al-Araby
Al-Araby
There’s no doubt that last week’sconviction of the Syrian war criminal Colonel Anwar Raslan in a German court has been one of the few positive outcomes of the Syrian civil war. Raslan, the former head of the particularly brutal Damascus-based Branch 251 of Assad’s mukhabarat, or intelligence service, has been convicted of crimes against humanity. His conviction, rather remarkable given the sheer extent and brazenness of Assad’s atrocities for almost 11 years, marks the first time that crimes against humanity have been definitively proven to have been committed by the Assad regime in a court of…