A German Court on Wednesday sentenced Col. Eyad Al-Gharib, 44, to four and a half years in prison for his role in the Syrian state torture regime.
The sentence was in the first verdict of its kind worldwide.
Al-Gharib, was found guilty of acting as an accessory to crimes against humanity by the higher regional court in the city of Koblenz.
He was a member of the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria before later fleeing to Germany, where he was arrested in February 2019.
The man brought at least 30 demonstrators to a Damascus prison for torture in autumn 2011, as President Bashar al-Assad was cracking down on protests in the early stages of the Syrian civil war.
Another verdict in the landmark trial is expected in April for the main defendant, Anwar Raslan, 58, who was also a state intelligence official.
He is accused of torturing at least 4,000 people at the Damascus prison and faces murder charges on 58 counts.
dpa/NAN
