 Participation in a process can truly empower a victim, and the sense that justice has been achieved is often the most important part of legal claim. But judgments also have a material impact on the client through orders for rehabilitation, restitution, compensation and, importantly, non-repetition. Victims of torture are often in a very vulnerable position where information is not easily... When a torture victim sees or confronts his torturer in court, where the torturer does not have any more control over the victim. This is a sweet feeling. Victims of torture in order to restore their belief in humanity, in society and their trust in the state need to feel that their rights have been vindicated through justice, through legal proceedings and statements made by courts. I'm one of 22 Syrians who submitted three different complaints in the German federal court. Justice will come when those who committed these war crimes be imprisoned. As lawyers, often we're very ambitious about all of the things we want to do. Very ambitious about using the courts, using our advocacy skills to change the system, completely transform it into the ideal. But I think when you speak with torture survivors, you realize what a huge mountain that is to climb and how important it is to put the person who's the survivor at the centre and to ensure that more survivors won't be created. Each victim will have a story to tell about who is the perpetrator, what did they do to them. It is for us only by taking individual cases of torture that we break the silence and show the community or the civil society that it is possible to go for litigation and punish the perpetrators. And in many cases with strategic litigation, we are trying to seek social change that may take a generation or more to achieve. This can be a powerful tool for civil society organizations fighting torture. As a torture survivor, one of the key things here for me is that you know that the torture right now is being controlled by the rule of law. It's being handled by the law. They have no more control over you, over your body and they don't have to tell you what to do. That is justice right there.