(AFP) An alleged former Syrian prison guard has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity under former president Bashar al-Assad, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The man, identified only as Fahad A., is accused of “acts of killing, torture and deprivation of liberty” while he worked in a Damascus facility run by Syrian intelligence in 2011 and 2012, during the Arab Spring protests.
German authorities have pursued several suspects for crimes committed in Syria’s civil war under the principle of universal jurisdiction, even after Assad’s ouster last December.
Prosecutors declined to give Fahad’s age or the year he came to Germany but said he was arrested in the town of Pirmasens in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
