A Syrian spy has been charged with crimes against humanity in the first prosecution of its kind in the UK.

The 58-year-old military intelligence officer fled to the UK after allegedly playing a leading role in the violent crackdown on protesters in Syria at the start of the uprising against the regime of former leader Bashar al-Assad.

Now he has been charged with war crimes of murder and torture in an unprecedented case.

It is the first time the Crown Prosecution Service has charged anyone with murder as a crime against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.

The landmark case is only the second prosecution by Scotland Yard’s war crimes team in the last 20 years.

Detectives are said to have spent over five years building a case against the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

He faces three counts of murder as a crime against humanity, three counts of torture, and one offence of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity.

Lawyers are expected to make an application for the man to be tried anonymously.

The defendant is alleged to have committed war crimes while leading a group that attempted to put an end to demonstrations in the village of Jobar, near Damascus, in April 2011. Pictured: Anti-government activists in Daraa, Syria, in 2011

Syrian anti-government protesters demonstrate in Banias on April 29, 2010, the ‘Day of Rage’ called by activists to pile pressure of President Bashar al-Assad

The case concerns the activities of Syria’s feared Syrian Air Force Intelligence, which has previously been described by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights as the ‘most powerful and most brutal’ of Syria’s state security agencies.

The defendant is alleged to have committed war crimes while leading a group that attempted to put an end to demonstrations in the village of Jobar, near Damascus, in April 2011.

A decade later police arrested him at an address in Buckinghamshire in December 2021 after officers received a tip off a year earlier about an individual in the Syrian armed forces.

The suspect was released on bail for the next five years while police investigated further.

On Monday, Commander Helen Flanagan, who leads Counter Terrorism Policing’s (CTP) war crimes unit, said: ‘This has been an incredibly complex and challenging investigation, involving enquiries across many countries.

‘This has required close cooperation with a number of international partners, as well as our colleagues in the CPS.

‘The charges are extremely serious and show that we fully support the UK’s ‘no safe haven’ policy in relation alleged war criminals.

‘Where we are presented with allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that fall within our jurisdiction, then, as we have shown here, we will not hesitate to investigate those rigorously and robustly.’

The alleged war criminal was served with a postal charge requisition on Monday, notifying him of the charges he faces.

In the last two decades the elite unit has only brought one other prosecution, charging the ex-wife of a former Liberian president with torture.

Agnes Reeves-Taylor, 54, was charged in 2017 with torture during Liberia’s civil war.

But the case against the university lecturer, who denied wrongdoing, collapsed following a technical appeal. A judge ruled there was a lack of evidence that the Taylor regime had governmental control over the areas where the alleged crimes happened. 

British laws permit the prosecution of certain serious international crimes such as murder, rape, torture and enslavement, regardless of where they are committed.

Crimes against humanity apply when specified acts are committed ‘as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack’.

The International Criminal Court Act 2001 grants extraterritorial jurisdiction for alleged offences committed after January 1, 1991, by anyone in the UK or overseas by British nationals, residents or service personnel.

Bethan David, the head of the CPS’s counter-terrorism division, said: ‘We have determined that a 58-year-old man should be prosecuted with charges of murder as a crime against humanity, and torture.

‘Our prosecutors have concluded that there is sufficient evidence to bring seven offences under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 and the Criminal Justice Act 1988.’

The man is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Tuesday.