Dutch Court Sentences Syrian Asylum Seeker to 26 Years for Torture and Rape as Crime Against Humanity

A Dutch court in The Hague sentenced Rafik A to 26 years in prison on Monday for crimes against humanity committed while he worked as an interrogator for the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The court found that Rafik A tortured and raped prisoners, using methods that included suspending detainees upside down and administering electric shocks in detention centres in 2013 and 2014.

” Rafik A was arrested in the Netherlands in 2023 after living in the country for two years as an asylum seeker.

Several other charges against him were dropped for lack of sufficient evidence. The trial was the first in the Netherlands in which sexual violence was prosecuted as a crime against humanity. ” His lawyers said he had been tortured by militias and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The sentence follows other European prosecutions of Syrians under the principle of universal jurisdiction. A German court sentenced Syrian doctor Alaa Mousa to life in prison in June 2025 after finding him guilty of murdering and torturing dissidents between 2011 and 2012. That trial lasted more than three years.

In May 2025, a French court sentenced Majdi Nema to 10 years in prison for war crimes committed during Syria’s civil war. Nema, who served as a spokesman for a rebel group fighting al-Assad, was convicted of conscripting minors aged 15 to 18 and helping plan war crimes. Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in a rebel offensive in December 2024.

Syria’s civil war began in 2011 and lasted almost 14 years.