A Syrian war crimes trial opens in Sweden today.
In the dock is the highest ranking Syrian military official to face accountability.
Sweden has put on trial the highest-ranking Syrian military officer to face a court in Europe. The prosecution charged 66 year old Mohammed Hamo, a former brigadier general of “aiding and abetting war crimes.”
The trial runs through May 24th.
The case focuses on the events in the Syrian city of Homs and a media center in the neighborhood of Baba Amr, under siege by the Syrian army. Homs was a major rebel strong hold and the siege lasted 3 years from 2011 to May 2014.
Hamo listened to prosecutor Karolina Wieslander read the charges in court today. According to reports from the court, Hamo listened carefully and wrote notes during the court proceedings.
For the first time “conduct of hostilities crimes” will be prosecuted. Proving the alleged crime requires proving attacks were not necessary nor proportionate. The charge is distinct from previous European war crime trials for Syrian officials where the cases focused on torture or the use of chemical weapons, which is always prohibited.
This case includes the shelling of Baba Amr, and the media center in 2012 where U.S. journalist Marie Colvin and French journalist Remi Ochlik were killed in a mortar attack on the makeshift center. Two other journalists, Paul Conroy and Edith Bouvier, were wounded.
The alleged crime cited in this case place the attacks in relation to the Syrian government’s response to the political uprising in 2011, the militarized response in 2011 and the escalation in 2012 that turned an uprising into a civil war.
In 2014 Hamo came to Sweden as a wave of Syrian refugees fled to Europe to escape the brutal war and widespread arrests that would often result in torture and death.
Hamo had defected from the Syrian army in July 2012 to join the rebels. But in his interview with immigration officials, he said had been the head of the armament unit of the 11th army division that was the key division shelling Aba Amr. Swedish officials noted his story, concerned, and passed on the details to the country’s war crime investigations unit.
It took ten years to develop the case.
Hamo’s defense lawyer argued before the court that Syrian law should be applied and denied criminal responsibility. The indiscriminate warfare was carried out by others, she told the court.
Sweden has a transparent court system. The charges, and the 8 plaintiffs who filed the case, are public. The plaintiffs include a man whose brother was killed in the attacks, well known Syrians who took part in the uprising and also includes Paul Conroy, the award-winning British photojournalist who survived the attack on the Homs media center on the day that Colvin was killed. He’s currently covering the war in Ukraine.
A German court was the first to sentence a former Syrian colonel, Anwar Raslan to life in Jail in 2022. He was convicted of crimes against humanity. The German trial was the first to address state-sponsored torture in Syria.