Austrian court convicts two ex-Syrian security officials for torture

Court ruling in Vienna

An Austrian court found two former Syrian security officials guilty of crimes committed in Raqqa between 2011 and 2013, applying universal jurisdiction to prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Khaled al‑Halabi, who headed the General Intelligence Directorate in Raqqa, was convicted of torture, aggravated bodily harm and sexual assault against 21 victims and sentenced to eight years in prison after testimony from more than a dozen survivors describing kicks to the head, electric shocks to the genitals and water-based torture. Musab Abu Rukbah, a criminal police investigator nicknamed "the Angel of Death," was convicted on related charges (excluding those specifically classified as torture); the court found both men sometimes ordered, sometimes failed to prevent, and in some cases carried out abuses themselves.

The two defendants came to Austria in 2015 under what prosecutors described as a secret Israeli–Austrian intelligence arrangement and had been living there as refugees before the case. Both pleaded not guilty and the verdict can be appealed; al‑Halabi said he was following orders, a defense prosecutors likened to the rejected Nuremberg argument. The decision is part of a series of European prosecutions tied to atrocities from Syria's long civil war, and the report situates the convictions against the backdrop of Raqqa's fall to rebels in 2013, Islamic State control in 2014, and later shifts in control through 2017 and January 2026 as reported by Deutsche Welle