Syria Has Sentenced Ousted President Bashar Al-Assad To Death In Absentia For War Crimes
A court in Damascus sentenced Bashar and Maher to death in absentia in the first such verdict against Assad or anyone in his inner circle since his government fell.
A Syrian court has sentenced ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother Maher to death in absentia after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people during nearly 14 years of Syria’s civil war.
The Assad family had run Syria for more than five decades.
Bashar became president in 2000, after his father Hafez, who had ruled the country since 1971, died.
Bashar kept tight control over the country, using state security forces to crush dissent.
In early 2011, a group of children, some as young as 10, in the southern Syrian city of Daraa spray-painted anti-government graffiti on a school wall, echoing slogans from the Arab Spring uprisings then sweeping the Middle East.
Security forces arrested and tortured the teenagers and when their families and neighbors protested, demanding their release, forces opened fire on the crowd, killing several people.
The crackdown in Daraa spread into nationwide protests against Assad's government.
Assad responded with a brutal crackdown, and the uprising escalated into a full civil war that lasted nearly 14 years, killing about half a million people and forcing millions more from their homes.
In December 2024, rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and now president Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled former president Bashar al-Assad and his regime in a 12-day lightning offensive.
Bashar and Maher fled to Russia, where they were granted political asylum.
Syria has since been run by a transitional government, which this year began putting former officials from Assad's government on trial, both in person and in absentia.
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, a court in Damascus sentenced Bashar and Maher to death in absentia in the first such verdict against Assad or anyone in his inner circle since his government fell.
Bashar has been sentenced to death for crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children” as well as “torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity,” according to the Guardian.
The court also sentenced Assad's cousin, Atef Najib, a former brigadier general who led Syria's political security Branch in Daraa, who was arrested in January 2025 for launching a deadly crackdown on protesters in Daraa in 2011, to death.
Najib’s crimes include murder, “the intentional killing of children under 15” and “torture leading to death”, according to the court, Al Jazeera reported.
The court also sentenced five former military and security officials in absentia to death, including former defense minister Fahd al-Freij and military intelligence chief in Daraa in 2011, Louay al-Ali.
A crowd gathered outside the courthouse in central Damascus to hear the ruling, holding pictures of the victims.
The court also ordered Bashar and Maher al-Assad be pursued internationally, and Syrian authorities have asked Russia to hand the brothers over.
Russia has not indicated it will do so, and it is unclear whether the death sentences can ever be carried out while the men remain outside Syria.
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Cherry Mohamed
Cherry Mohamed
Cherry Mohamed
