Author: Patrick Alexander Wittum

Published: 10 November 2020 Authors: Patrick Wittum and Stefan Talmon

In November 2017, nine Syrian refugees living in Germany filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Prosecutor General’s Office concerning crimes against humanity and war crimes in Syria. The complaint was directed against ten high-ranking officials of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate, including its head, Major General Jamil Al-Hassan. The Federal Prosecutor General commenced investigative proceedings for crimes against humanity in the case of General Hassan in May 2018. He was suspected of several deeds committed individually, jointly with another or through another person, and as a military commander between 29 April and August 2013 as part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against a civilian population in Syria. These deeds included killing at least 352 people, torturing a yet to be determined number of people, causing other physical or mental harm to a yet to be determined number of people, and severely depriving, in contravention of a general rule of international law, a yet to be determined number of people of their physical liberty. In June 2018, the Federal Court of Justice issued an international arrest warrant for General Hassan at the request of the Federal Prosecutor General. This was the first time since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011 that a country was prosecuting a high-ranking Syrian Government official for crimes against humanity. In November 2018, France followed suit, issuing international arrest warrants for senior Syrian intelligence and government officials, including for General Hassan. (more…)

Published: 02 July 2020 Author: Patrick Alexander Wittum

Historically, Turkey and Germany have had very close relations. Both countries are allies in NATO, and Turkey is an EU accession candidate. Germany is the most important trading partner and largest foreign investor in Turkey. Germany hosts the world’s largest Turkish community abroad with 2.8 million Turkish immigrants, more than half of which have German citizenship. Since 2016, however, ties between Ankara and Berlin have been strained. On 2 June 2016, the German Federal Parliament characterised the mass murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War as “genocide”. In the aftermath of the abortive coup on 15 July 2016, Turkish authorities sacked or suspended 150,000 officials and detained more than 50,000 people, including several German nationals. Turkey accused Germany of interfering in the 16 April 2017 constitutional referendum by preventing Turkish Ministers from campaigning in Germany, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany of “Nazi practices”. (more…)