Anwar al-Bunni devoted his life to human rights in Syria. Now in exile in Germany, he is part of a landmark first prosecution for war crimes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime
Anwar al-Bunni had only been in Germany a couple of months when he walked into a shop and found himself face to face with the man he believes had interrogated and jailed him nearly a decade earlier. Both men were buying groceries in a Turkish shop near the gates of Marienfelde, the Berlin refugee camp they now called home. There was a vague flicker of recognition, but Bunni couldn’t quite place the other man.
It was 2014, a year before Angela Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees drew more than a million people fleeing war and hardship to the country. Even so, thousands of Syrians had already found their way to Berlin. Bunni, a human rights lawyer with more than three decades’ experience fighting the Syrian regime in the courts, and several years spent inside its jails for his trouble, was part of a large network of colleagues, clients, friends and former opponents.
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