T
HE BALDING figure looks frail and harmless, sitting in the dock behind a Perspex screen in the German town of Koblenz, where the rivers Rhine and Moselle unite. But appearances can deceive. Anwar Raslan, 57, once a Syrian policeman, has been charged with torturing more than 4,000 people and murdering at least 58 between 2011 and 2012, when Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, set about crushing the initially peaceful demonstrations that shook his regime as the Arab spring took off.
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Mr Raslan is on trial because, by his own lights, he made a mistake. Having fallen out with the regime, in 2012 he joined the exodus of Syrians who ended up in Germany, where he seemed to be settling down nicely with his family in a Berlin suburb, until one of his alleged victims, by a fluke, spotted his presence and told a human-rights group. With the encouragement of