On Thursday, a German court convicted a Syrian Palestinian of war crime and murder for firing a hand grenade at a crowd of civilians waiting for food aid in the Yarmouk camp on the outskirts of Damascus in 2014.
The court sentenced the accused (Muwafaq al-Dr.), nicknamed “the butcher of Yarmouk,” to life imprisonment, according to the statement. The Washington Post American.
The court said the defendant acted out of revenge against civilians in the area after his 25-year-old nephew was killed by gunfire from gunmen opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The defendant was found guilty of a serious war crime, four counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and bodily harm. According to the court’s decision, which can be appealed, the convict will not be eligible for release after 15 years, as is usually the case in Germany.
In August 2021, the German authorities announced the arrest of (Mowaffaq L.D.), and said at the time that he was accused of war crimes in Syria.
Civilians in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees, south of Damascus, were among a crowd waiting for food aid when the man fired a shell at them from an anti-tank weapon, killing seven and seriously wounding three, including a six-year-old.
Prosecutors said at the time that Muwafaq was accused of belonging to an armed Palestinian faction fighting on the side of Assad’s forces.
The camp was at one time the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. It was under siege from the Syrian army and its allied factions from 2013 to 2018, when the army wrested control of it from Islamist militants.
Germany applies the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows its courts to try perpetrators of serious crimes, regardless of their nationality or where the crimes were committed.