A German court has sentenced a former member of Syria’s intelligence service to 4.5 years in prison for facilitating the torture of prisoners. Eyal Al-Gharib, who’d received asylum in Germany, was accused of being part of the inhumane regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad that has carried out torture at “almost industrial scale”, critics say. It is the first time that a court outside of Syria has ruled in a case alleging an official from Bashar al-Assad’s regime committed crimes against humanity. Human rights activists hope it will set a precedent for other cases as they seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of people who have succumbed to Assad’s torture machine.