War Crimes Indictment Reveals a Hard Road to Justice for Syria

Finally, on Wednesday, a 12-year manhunt and investigation reached a climax. Brig. Gen. Khaled al-Halabi, 62, the most senior Syrian official to be accused in Europe of war crimes, was indicted and charged with torture.

He has been in the custody of Austrian authorities since last December. One of the pieces of the puzzle that led independent investigators to him was a photograph the brigadier posted on social media of himself on a bridge in Budapest.

In announcing the indictment, Austria’s public prosecutor’s office in Vienna did not name the two former Syrian officials charged with “serious crimes.” But lawyers and victims involved in the case confirmed that they were Mr. Halabi and Mr. Abu Rukbah.

An undated social media photo of Brig. Gen. Khaled al-Halabi in Budapest. Investigators used the image to track down Mr. al-Halabi, who is now in custody in Austria.

Through their lawyers, both men previously denied mistreating detainees. After news of the indictment, Mr. al-Halabi’s lawyer did not respond to requests to comment.

Mr. Abu Rukbah’s lawyer, Roland Kier, said he had not yet seen the indictment, “so it might be difficult to give you a proper statement not knowing what the actual accusation is.”

“The only thing that I can tell you,” he added, “is that my client is not arrested.”

The accusations against the men relate to their roles in putting down the Arab Spring uprising from 2011 to 2013 against the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in the northern city of Raqqa.

Mr. al-Halabi’s indictment, while a breakthrough, shows just how difficult it may be to bring members of the former regime to justice.

For years, attempts to set up an international tribunal to try war crimes in Syria were blocked by Russia, where Mr. al-Assad has now sought refuge. The new Syrian government has set up a war crimes commission, but such efforts take years.

Justice has instead been left to individual countries to pursue. But even those that opposed the former regime may have developed conflicting interests as they cultivated contacts in Syria.

Mr. al-Halabi was one of them. He worked as a double agent for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, before he fled Syria in 2013, according to investigators working for nonprofit groups and Austrian prosecutors. He made his way to Paris but slipped away in 2015 as the French began more closely scrutinizing asylum applicants for possible involvement in war crimes.

With the help of Mossad and a group of Austrian intelligence officers, he was brought across Europe by car to the Austrian border, according to an Austrian prosecutor. The Austrian intelligence officers cooperated with Mossad on their own initiative, according to the prosecutor, and escorted Mr. al-Halabi to Vienna, the storied city of spies. For a time, it was his refuge.

It took investigators years to discover Mr. al-Halabi’s whereabouts.

Eventually, the Austrian intelligence officers’ role was uncovered and investigated by an Austrian prosecutor, who charged them with abuse of office.

Neither the Israeli government nor Mossad replied to questions about their involvement with Mr. al-Halabi. The Austrian Interior and Justice Ministries said they did not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.

Mr. al-Halabi’s indictment, the first in Austria of Assad officials, is an important milestone for Austria and also for the Syrian victims. It follows convictions in Germany and Sweden of Syrians from the former regime.

“This is our case,” said Abdallah Al Sham, a former activist from Raqqa who worked with a European-based nonprofit, the Open Society Justice Initiative, to help find witnesses.

“When we were running in the streets and we heard the name of al-Halabi, or another state security official, we were terrified,” he said, recalling the time of the Syrian uprising. “And can you imagine if I see one of them, who investigated my friends, in court, in front of me? It is turning the tables.”

An Assad Loyalist

A member of the Druse minority in Syria, which also has a significant community in Israel, Mr. al-Halabi was a career army officer from the city of Swaida, near the capital, Damascus. He was assigned to the Syrian intelligence service in 2001.

In 2008, he was appointed head of the State Security Branch 335, one of the Syrian intelligence services, in Raqqa.

The security services were focused on finding the organizers of the protests and the activists who were passing video footage of the protests to the international media, victims said. As the demonstrations swelled, the security forces turned to using lethal force. Torture to extract information was routine.

Twenty-one victims have been identified, the prosecutor’s statement said. Many of them gave accounts of debilitating beatings and electric shocks inside Security Branch 335.

This included, one said, a nightlong torture session inside Mr. al-Halabi’s personal office.

Torture in the Office

Several survivors said in interviews with The New York Times that they had met Mr. al-Halabi in his office before they were detained and tortured there. So even while blindfolded or under duress, they recognized their surroundings.

Dr. Alhmada said he was detained at gunpoint in February 2012. He did not see Mr. al-Halabi during his detention, he said, but saw his name plate on the desk and had been summoned to the office before. He also said he saw Mr. Abu Rukbah, who served as the head of criminal investigations in the Criminal Security Branch in Raqqa.

“His mistake was to remove my blindfold,” he said of his tormentor.

One night, stripped to his underwear, Dr. Alhmada was beaten in Mr. al-Halabi’s office, he said. He curled up on the floor, protecting his head with his arms, he said, as Mr. Abu Rukbah thrashed him with a baton or hose, demanding the names of activists involved in the protests.

Over 28 days he was repeatedly interrogated, he said, and offered a deal if he would inform on others.

Encountering Your Abuser

Also prepared to testify is Asyad Almousa.

Mr. Almousa, 46, a lawyer, says he was twice detained by Mr. al-Halabi’s group in 2011 and later badly tortured in a Military Intelligence facility in 2012.

In the summer of 2011 he had set up a committee of lawyers in Raqqa to defend jailed Arab Spring demonstrators. He organized a strike of more than 100 lawyers to protest the government’s use of lethal weapons against them.

He said it was then that he was dragged out from the Palace of Justice, bundled into a car that he recognized as belonging to the State Security branch and jailed for 12 days.

Asyad Almousa, right, with a friend, Omar Alhwaidi, another former detainee from Raqqa, Syria, in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, in 2023.Credit…Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Mr. Almousa escaped Syria and in 2015 arrived in Europe, only to come face to face with the man he says tortured him, Mr. Abu Rukbah, in a refugee camp in Austria.

His friends held him back from lunging at him, fearful it would get him deported.

“You feel pain when you see victims,” Mr. Almousa said, “but you feel even more pain when you see these criminals evading justice.”

He told the camp authorities that there was a war criminal among the refugees. Mr. Abu Rukbah was removed from the camp, but he remained living freely in Austria, a lawyer for the victims said.

From Defector to Suspect

As fighting advanced, Mr. al-Halabi fled Raqqa in March 2013, smuggled himself into Turkey and a few months later, via Jordan, made it to Paris, investigators and Austrian prosecutors said.

At first, war crimes investigators were interested in Mr. al-Halabi as a defector from the regime, said Chris Engels, a director at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. The nongovernmental organization has collected thousands of documents on crimes committed in Syria.

Then, in 2015, Mr. al-Halabi disappeared from Paris.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, another nonprofit organization focused on war crimes, set up a team to track and trace suspected war criminals and compile dossiers for prosecutions.

Mr. al-Halabi was the first of 30 individuals they began investigating.

“He was Case Zero,” said Steve Kostas, who led the work at the Open Society.

A Protection Network?

In January 2016, the investigators from the Commission for International Justice and Accountability traveled to Vienna and presented their findings to officials of the Austrian Justice Ministry.

The Austrian officials then began a search for Mr. al-Halabi — and came to suspect that their own intelligence service was protecting him.

The former head of B.V.T. had traveled to Israel and made the cooperation agreement with Mossad in 2015, according to the prosecution.

Four of the officials were acquitted for lack of evidence that they had done harm to the Austrian state. A fifth official was absent because of ill health. But the trial gave victims’ lawyers a first sighting of Mr. al-Halabi, who appeared as a witness.

According to the prosecution in their case, Mr. al-Halabi had served as an intelligence agent for Mossad in Syria, and it was Mossad’s request to bring him to Austria.

For his victims, apparent Western collusion in protecting their tormentor added to their pain.

“The Austrian government and intelligence service helped Mossad and helped their war criminals,” Mr. Almousa said. “This is the worst level of criminality.”