A Syrian court sentenced in absentia on Tuesday the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, overthrown in December 2024 and exiled in Moscow, to the death penalty for several crimes, including crimes against humanity, in the first public sentence against the political leader who ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than two decades. Judge Fakhr al Din al Uryan, of the criminal court number 4 of Damascus, read the sentence in which eight more people were also sentenced to death, including Assad’s brother, Maher al-Assad, and his cousin Atef Najib, the only one present at the session.
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“The contribution of the criminal Bashar al-Assad to the crimes was that of the highest decision-maker, who mobilized state institutions to commit them,” said the judge. Therefore, the court found the dictator, who is sheltered in Russia, guilty of the “serious crime of premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and children, as well as the serious crime of torture and arbitrary detention, and of committing crimes against humanity.”
This ruling took place in the hearing against Atef Najib, who was head of the Political Security branch in Deraa, in southern Syria where the popular uprisings began in 2011 that led to a 14-year war in the country. “Investigations and witness testimonies demonstrated the participation of the accused Atef Najib in the interrogation of several detainees after the start of protests in Deraa,” declared Al Uryan, adding that the political security branch Najib led, “together with other security branches, stormed the Omari mosque in Deraa.”
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In addition to Bashar, Maher, and Najib, the judge also sentenced to death six other fugitives mentioned in the case, all in absentia, for the crime of “premeditated and intentional murder and torture resulting in death.”
Attending this hearing were Attorney General Hasan al Turbeh; the head of the Transitional Justice Commission, Abdulbaset Abdullatif, and other members of the commission, representatives of international legal and humanitarian organizations, and relatives of the victims. The trial, the first of the transitional justice period in Syria and the first public prosecution of a former senior security official for the 2011 repression, began on April 26 in Damascus and has since held nine hearings.
