EIt is the 120th day of the trial of Alaa M., a Syrian who is accused by federal prosecutors of torturing opponents of the Assad regime, who were imprisoned as a doctor in 2011 and 2012. The 5th Criminal Division of the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt is questioning another witness who has been friends with the defendant for 20 years. The two men studied medicine together in Aleppo from 2003 to 2009 and became friends in the summer of 2004 after a witness discovered that they were both members of Syria's Christian minority. They even lived in a shared apartment with other students for three years. The witness has been in Germany for ten years and now works as a senior cardiologist at a clinic in North Rhine-Westphalia. He needs an interpreter assigned to him only in very few places, his German language skills are excellent.
The witness, who moved to Damascus in 2009 and began training as an internist at the university hospital there, describes how he perceived M. during his studies. He didn't have to study much to get good grades. Among his friends, he was known to be “smart”, also a “cool guy”, entertaining, full of ideas, loved to travel and was popular with women. M. did well financially. The nickname given to him by the clique is used in Arabic for a strong personality. “To show off?” asks the chairman. “No, a strong personality,” the cardiologist replies.
BKA should read the conversation
The judges question the witness about his attitude to the war in his homeland at the time. He says he was on neither side. “I think it's all wrong,” he says. At the same time, he states that he was not interested in the war at the time. And also that he and the defendant did not talk about the war and its side effects in their rare contacts in 2011.
The interrogation gained momentum when the witness claimed that he had recorded on his mobile phone the history of a conversation with another friend: the friend told him in September 2011 that M. was from Homs, where he began his professional training as a trauma surgeon after completing it. studies, now also moves to Damascus.
This may be significant because some of the crimes alleged by M. to have been committed by federal prosecutors and confirmed by trial witnesses allegedly took place in 2012 in a military prison in Homs. However, the defendant claims that at that moment he was already working permanently in Damascus. In recent months, witnesses questioned in court, who also testified at the request of the defendant, did not clearly remember when he moved to Damascus. The cardiologist will show the conversation to the court on Tuesday and has agreed to have it read by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The chairman wants to know from the witness when he remembered the existence of this conversation. The answer that it was about one and a half to two years ago surprised the judge. Did it not occur to him to contact the investigative authorities or the defense? According to the witness, it was not clear to him that the message could be important. His questioning will continue on Thursday.