Brussels
Austria’s public prosecutor has formally charged two former Syrian security officers with committing systematic torture between 2011 and 2013.
According to judicial sources and lawyers representing victims, the accused are Major General Khaled al-Halabi (62), former head of State Security in the city of Raqqa, and Colonel Musab Abu Rukba (53), who served with the Criminal Security branch in the same province, The New York Times reported.
The paper said al-Halabi is now the highest-ranking former Syrian security official to face trial in Europe for war crimes.
The Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that the two officers are accused of committing “serious violations of human rights”, including torture and unlawful detention of dozens of civilians who took part in peaceful protests against the regime.
Investigations found that al-Halabi personally oversaw torture sessions inside his branch in Raqqa. Testimonies from 21 victims describe beatings and electric shocks, with some detainees saying they were interrogated inside al-Halabi’s office.
One of the key witnesses, according to The New York Times, is Dr. Obada al-Hamada, who was arrested in 2012 and beaten inside the same office. Another, lawyer Asaad al-Mousa, said he was detained twice for defending protesters before later encountering one of his torturers in a refugee camp in Austria.
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Reports indicate that al-Halabi fled Syria in 2013 and later reached France, where he was granted asylum with the help of agents from Israel’s Mossad and Austria’s intelligence services. He was then secretly resettled in Vienna.
Austrian authorities subsequently opened an investigation into five intelligence officers accused of “abuse of office” for aiding his escape. Four were acquitted due to insufficient evidence, The New York Times said.
This is the first case of its kind in Austria against former officials of the Assad regime and follows similar trials in Germany and Sweden targeting ex-security personnel.
Analysts see the case as a major test of Europe’s ability to prosecute Syrian war criminals, amid years of international deadlock over creating a special tribunal for Syria – especially as several suspects have sought refuge in Western countries under new identities or intelligence protection.
In June, a German court sentenced a Syrian doctor to life imprisonment for committing crimes against regime opponents in hospitals in Homs and Damascus, Reuters reported.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court convicted Dr. Alaa Mousa after a trial lasting more than three years, during which around 50 witnesses, victims and experts testified.
Mousa was accused of torturing detainees while working at a military hospital and other facilities between 2011 and 2012 – including performing surgery on a patient with a broken bone without adequate anaesthesia and attempting to sterilise prisoners.
Observers described the German verdict as “historic” – one of the first significant international steps toward holding perpetrators of human rights abuses in the Syrian conflict accountable.
Mousa arrived in Germany in 2015 as an orthopaedic surgeon and was arrested in 2020 after Syrian refugees recognised him.
