Overview

• Alaa Mousa was found guilty on June 16, 2025, of torture and murder at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs between 2011 and 2012 and received a life sentence from the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court.
• Prosecutors detailed 18 incidents of extreme cruelty, citing witness accounts of victims being set on fire, beaten with medical tools and given lethal injections.
• Mousa denied personal involvement, claiming he was too afraid of military police to intervene and insisting he was ensnared in a conspiracy.
• The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights backed the prosecution, illustrating Germany’s expanding use of universal jurisdiction to hold Assad regime operatives to account.
• Investigators highlighted the Mezzeh 601 military hospital as a central node in the regime’s systematic torture apparatus against political detainees.