Overview

• Prosecutors have demanded life imprisonment, indefinite preventive detention and a professional ban for Alaa M. over two alleged killings and eight counts of torture in Homs between 2011 and 2012.
• Defense lawyers argued that Alaa M. left Homs in November 2011 and therefore cannot be tied to the deaths, requesting acquittal on the murder charges.
• Victim representatives delivered graphic accounts of electrocution, hanging and burning of detainees, calling the abuses among the worst imaginable.
• Alaa M. was detained in Germany in 2020 after survivors identified him in a television documentary and a court-appointed expert diagnosed sadistic tendencies.
• The verdict on these alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity is scheduled for June 16, marking one of Germany’s most significant universal jurisdiction prosecutions.