On Friday, the trial of five senior Austrian officials began in Vienna , accused of abuse of power, as they are suspected of providing protection to a Syrian officer accused of crimes against humanity.

The indictment, seen by AFP, states that "the defendants willfully abused their positions" by helping a former Syrian general obtain asylum in Austria.

Prosecutors said four intelligence agents and an official from the Office for Refugee Protection "illegally" facilitated asylum for Khaled al-Halabi , the most senior Syrian official in Europe, according to NGOs.

The results of the investigation indicated that they had acted under an agreement reached in May 2015 with a "foreign partner", which the Austrian press said was the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service.

The Public Prosecution confirmed that the "foreign partner agency" "illegally" smuggled this Syrian officer out of France, where he was forbidden to leave, to transfer him to Austria "in a car with diplomatic plates," without further details.

Then the Austrian services transported him “by a service car” to a place of residence and arranged for him to obtain asylum in December 2015, without respecting their duty to inform the Public Prosecution Office.

Defendants who reject the charges face up to five years in prison. In 2016, the International Commission for Justice and Accountability, a non-governmental organization fighting impunity for war criminals in Syria, informed the Austrian authorities of suspected involvement in war crimes by Khaled al-Halabi, after they identified him in Vienna while he was carrying a false identity.

Khaled al-Halabi served as the head of State Security Intelligence in Raqqa from 2009 to 2013, and in this context he is accused of supervising acts of torture and other crimes against civilians.

With the advent of the Islamic State in 2013, he fled to France, where he faced difficulties in obtaining asylum.
The prosecution said that the investigation is still ongoing.

Several officials of the Syrian regime are subject to judicial prosecutions in Europe.

And in Austria, a former Free Syrian Army fighter was sentenced to life in prison in May 2017 for executing 20 wounded government soldiers and after disarming them. The ruling was upheld on appeal two years later.