Vienna, July 6 (SANA) An Austrian court is expected to deliver its verdict on Monday in the trial of two deposed regime officers accused of torturing detainees during the early years of the Syrian revolution.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Khaled al-Halabi, 63, a former brigadier general in the deposed regime‘s intelligence service who has been held in pretrial detention since 2024, faces charges including torture, sexual coercion and causing serious bodily harm.
The second defendant, Musab Abu Rakba, 54, a former lieutenant colonel and head of a local criminal investigation office, is accused of causing serious bodily harm and sexual coercion during his service in Raqqa between April 2011 and March 2013.
Prosecutors accuse the two men of repeatedly ordering or failing to prevent the abuse of members of the protest movement.
Several former detainees testified that they were severely beaten by prison guards while the defendants were responsible for the detention facility. One witness said he still lives in fear, describing how al-Halabi interrogated him before he was beaten on the soles of his feet with electrical cables. Others described being held in overcrowded cells, with one saying he was kept naked for eight or nine days while cold water was repeatedly poured over him.
According to prosecutors, al-Halabi acted on direct instructions from the deposed regime and systematically employed what they described as standard methods of torture.
Local media reported that Israel’s Mossad transferred al-Halabi to Austria from France, where he had been living. The Austrian Press Agency (APA) reported that the operation, codenamed “White Milk,” was overseen by Martin Weiss, then head of Austria’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT).
The case is the latest in Europe involving former officials of the deposed regime accused of crimes committed during the Syrian revolution under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national courts to prosecute certain serious crimes regardless of where they were committed.
In March, Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London opened the trial of former Air Force Intelligence colonel Salem al-Salem on charges including murder, crimes against humanity and torture. During the same month, a court in Berlin began the trial of a former militia leader affiliated with the deposed regime on charges including crimes against humanity, the killing of demonstrators and handing detainees over to the deposed regime’s security agencies, where they were allegedly subjected to torture and ill-treatment.
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