Ex-Syrian intelligence chief in Raqqa convicted of torture in Austria

Khaled al-Halabi denied involvement, but court deemed him responsible for abuse of detainees in Raqqa.

An Austrian court has convicted a former Syrian intelligence officer from Raqqa on charges including torture for his role in the abuse of opponents of Syria’s ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The court in Vienna on Monday sentenced Khaled al-Halabi, a 63-year-old former brigadier general in Syria’s intelligence services, to eight years in prison.

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A second defendant, former police lieutenant colonel Musab Abu Rukbah, 54, whom the prosecution said was nicknamed “the Angel of Death”, was also given an eight-year sentence.

More than a dozen victims testified during the month-long trial that they were beaten, electrocuted or doused in hot and cold water while al-Halabi was head of the General Intelligence Directorate in Raqqa, Syria from 2011 to 2013, when the Free Syrian Army seized control of the city.

The case is one of the few in which a European country has asserted jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed by Syrian state agents.

Al-Halabi told the court he helped facilitate the Free Syrian Army’s takeover of Raqqa and fled the next day – a journey that eventually brought him to Austria, where he later applied for asylum.

He denied any knowledge of violence against people held in his agency’s building or an infamous torture device known as the “flying carpet” – a wooden board that victims would be fastened to with a hinge at waist level – that was found there after he fled.

The court ruled, however, that he knew of and was responsible for the torture of prisoners in his custody.

“Of course you were actively aware,” the presiding judge said, referring to beatings of new arrivals immediately after their arrest that the prosecution said took place in the building’s courtyard.

“I’m still afraid to this day,” one man testified in court, recounting how al-Halabi interrogated him, during which the soles of his feet were beaten with electric cables.

Several detainees said they were kept in tiny cells, with one saying he was held for eight or nine days, naked, with cold water repeatedly poured on him.

The prosecution said al-Halabi got “direct instructions” from the Damascus government and used violence “systematically” with “standardised torture methods” including beating and hosing down prisoners.

Al-Halabi was found guilty of torture, serious bodily harm, aggravated coercion and sexual assault. Abu Rukbah was not charged with torture, but was found guilty of the other charges also faced by al-Halabi. Both men had pleaded not guilty.

Syrian officials have also faced trials in France, Germany, Sweden and Belgium for alleged crimes committed during the country’s civil war.