Nine years ago, a 55-year-old man fired an anti-tank weapon into a group of people waiting for aid deliveries in Syria. In Berlin, the man is convicted of war crimes and murder. In court he protested his innocence.
A 55-year-old militia fighter in the Syrian civil war has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The Berlin Court of Appeal found the stateless Moafak D. guilty of a particularly serious war crime, four counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. The court also determined the particular gravity of the guilt, which largely rules out early release.
The criminal senate saw it as proven that on March 23, 2014 in the Syrian capital of Damascus, D., as a fighter for a militia loyal to the government, had fired an anti-tank grenade into a crowd waiting for food. Four people were killed in the process. Two others who appeared as joint plaintiffs in the trial suffered serious injuries. According to the verdict, there are many indications that there were “significantly more” dead and injured, but this could not be determined with certainty.
The crime took place in the Yarmouk district, originally a camp for Palestinian refugees. Two militias took control of the civil war there on behalf of the Syrian government – the General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Free Palestine Movement (FPM). From 2012, after the beginning of the civil war, there were also protests against the authoritarian Syrian leadership in Yarmouk.
Therefore, between July 2013 and April 2015, the two armed groups sealed off the district completely. As a result, the residents suffered from a lack of food, water and medical care.
According to the verdict, the accused is said to have been a member of the FPM since 2014 at the latest. On the day of the crime, he was working with a group of fighters he commanded at a checkpoint to monitor the distribution of food by a United Nations agency. The 55-year-old shot the grenade into the crowd to “take revenge on and punish the defenseless residents of the neighborhood,” as presiding judge Delia Neumann said.
He was “still angry” that his nephew had been killed two days earlier – presumably by Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters. The Syrian leadership suspected the people in Yarmouk of collaborating with the FSA.
D. stated in two statements that he had worked first in the construction industry in Yarmouk and then as a messenger for one of the militias there. At the time of the crime, however, he was not in the district. His defense attorneys therefore pleaded for an acquittal. However, the court did not follow this – but instead followed the request of the federal prosecutor in full.
The man came to Germany in 2018 through a family reunification. He was later arrested here. Since war criminals can also be tried in Germany according to the so-called universal legal principle, the trial against him began in August 2022.
