A Syrian court docket sentenced ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad alongside along with his youthful brother to demise in absentia in the present day for crimes in opposition to humanity and warfare crimes.
The offences befell throughout Syria’s 14-year battle, which started in 2011 and left an estimated half one million folks useless.
The sentences on the Fourth Prison Court docket in Damascus are the primary in opposition to Assad or members of his interior circle because the Assad household’s 5 a long time in energy got here to an finish in December 2024.
His humiliating retreat from the nation he as soon as known as residence noticed him money in a favour with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who airlifted him and his household to Moscow.
‘Bashar Assad used state businesses to commit warfare crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity,’ mentioned decide Fakhareddine al-Aryan throughout a court docket session that was aired stay on state TV.
Additionally sentenced to demise in the identical case was Assad’s maternal cousin Atef Najib, who was convicted of overseeing a lethal crackdown within the southern province of Daraa that led to the rebellion and later the civil warfare.
Amid tight safety, Najib stood inside a cage carrying a prisoner’s uniform because the decide learn the sentence. A crowd of individuals gathered outdoors the courthouse in central Damascus to listen to the decision.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the federal government’s fall 20 months in the past and acquired political asylum. Syria’s new rulers have requested Russia handy the Assads over.
Najib, who was sanctioned by the US Division of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained in rural Latakia, in Syria’s north-west, and is among the highest-ranking officers to be placed on trial.
A Syrian court docket has sentenced former ruler Bashar al-Assad to demise in absentia
Folks verify the harm on the scene of a Syrian regime airforce strike that focused a neighbourhood in Syria’s rebel-held northern metropolis of Idlib on December 1, 2024
A member of the safety forces loyal to the interim Syrian authorities guards a checkpoint beforehand held by supporters of deposed president Bashar al-Assad, within the city of Ayn Shiqaq, within the coastal province of Latakia, on March 11, 2025
Najib is a former Syrian military brigadier normal who was head of the Political Safety Department in southern Syria’s Daraa province below Assad in 2011.
Throughout his tenure, greater than a dozen youngsters who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a faculty wall in Daraa had been arrested and tortured. The case grew to become a catalyst for mass protests in opposition to the repressive insurance policies of Assad’s safety forces.
The protests had been met by a brutal authorities crackdown and spiralled right into a 14-year civil warfare that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning insurgent offensive.
Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian army’s 4th Armoured Division – which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, along with operating its personal detention centres.
The court docket sentenced six former army and safety officers in absentia to demise. These convicted included former defence minister Fahd al-Freij and Louay al-Ali, who headed army intelligence in Daraa province in 2011.
Al-Assad, whose brutal therapy of his fellow countrymen gave him the nickname ‘The Butcher’, fled Syria when he was toppled in December 2024 by a group of insurgent forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose chief Abu Mohammad al-Julani is now the president of the nation.
Below al-Assad’s rule, Syrian authorities forces killed civilians en-masse as a part of its technique to defend in opposition to the civil warfare that decimated the nation between 2011 and December 2024.
The federal government is believed to have been accountable for killing 90 per cent of the greater than 300,000 civilians estimated to have died in that interval.
Between 2011 and 2023, a further 154,000 had been forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained by authorities forces, whereas greater than 135,000 folks, together with ladies and youngsters, had been tortured, incarcerated or killed in Ba’athist jail networks.
Photos of Assad carrying speedos generated ridicule on social media following the autumn of his regime
Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days enjoying video video games in his luxurious Moscow flat
Armed teams opposing the Assad regime seizing management of Aleppo on November 30, 2024
However Mr al-Assad is maybe most notorious for his forces’ use of chemical weapons throughout the civil warfare. Based on a research by the World Public Coverage Institute, pro-Assad forces carried out round 330 chemical assaults between 2012 and 2019.
The commonest chemical used was chlorine fuel, although Sarin fuel and sulphur mustard had been additionally used as nicely. All three are banned from use in warfare by worldwide legislation.
Stephen Rapp, the US’ former Ambassador-at-Giant for Battle Crimes Points, mentioned in 2014 following the discharge of proof of torture below the Assad regime: ‘That is… the type of equipment of merciless demise that we have not seen, frankly, because the Nazis.’
He added on the time: ‘Whether it is because it seems to this point, we’re speaking about greater than 10,000 people being killed in custody over the interval from 2011 to 2013, together with largely males but in addition some very, very younger males and boys and girls… It is stunning to me, as a prosecutor. I am used to proof not being so robust.’
The civil warfare additionally noticed the exodus of 6.6million folks from the nation, who all fled for concern of their lives.
These refugees contributed to the European migrant disaster that dominated the mid-2010s. UNHCR, the UN’s refugee company, acquired virtually a million asylum functions in Europe by August 2017.
Many European nations additionally needed to quickly host huge numbers of refugees. Turkey was the most important host nation, in 2023 holding 3.3million Syrian refugees in 2023.
The deposed ruler is now believed to stay in three flats in a luxurious high-rise with a mall downstairs in Moscow after his former ally Vladimir Putin airlifted him and his household overseas.
One image discovered following the regime’s fall reveals Assad in nothing however white pants and a vest, clearly posing for the digital camera
An image exhibiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is taken by Rebels following the seize of his palace in Aleppo
A automotive burns following clashes between Syria’s new authorities and supporters of deposed president Bashar al-Assad close to the city of Jableh within the coastal province of Latakia on March 10, 2025
Since fleeing, he took up his outdated job as an eye fixed physician – a task he educated for in London as a younger man – to deal with the elite of Russia’s capital.
A buddy of the household informed The Guardian in 2025, a 12 months after he was deposed: ‘He is finding out Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology once more.
‘It is a ardour of his, he clearly does not want the cash. Even earlier than the warfare in Syria started, he used to repeatedly observe his ophthalmology in Damascus’.
He educated in ophthalmology in London within the early Nineteen Nineties, however was recalled again to his residence nation following the sudden demise of his brother in a automotive crash in 1994.
Shortly after, he entered army academy and took over because the inheritor obvious to the regime.
Now he spends a lot of his time enjoying on-line video video games, regardless of being freely allowed to maneuver round Moscow and his nation villa outdoors of the Russian capital.
He has been supplied with bodyguards from a personal safety agency paid by the Russian authorities.
The buddy mentioned he now lives ‘a really quiet life’, including: ‘He has little or no, if any, contact with the skin world. He is solely in contact with a few individuals who had been in his palace, like Mansour Azzam [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yassar Ibrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’
Atef Najib, carrying a striped jail uniform, sat seemingly impassive on Sunday in a cage in a courtroom in Central Palace of Justice, in Syria’s capital, Damascus
Najib was a former brigadier-general and head of political safety within the southern province of Daraa, the place uprisings in opposition to the oppressive regime first erupted in 2011
One picture reveals him in a khaki hunter costume with a gun and fur accent, standing alongside mates who’re additionally in costume
The autumn of the Assad regime in Syria was extensively seen as being a significant embarrassment for Putin, who provided him refuge
A normal view reveals a whole bunch of individuals gathered in Al-Assi Sq. throughout celebrations marking one 12 months because the metropolis’s liberation, in Hama, Syria, December 5, 2025
A part of this comes from Putin’s obvious dismissal of Mr al-Assad following the autumn of the regime in Syria.
A supply near the Kremlin informed the newspaper: ‘Putin has little endurance for leaders who lose their grip on energy, and Assad is now not seen as a determine of affect and even an fascinating visitor to ask to dinner.’
In April, Atef Najib, al-Assad’s cousin who was additionally sentenced to demise, was paraded in a cage carrying a striped jail uniform as he went on trial accused of mass shootings and torturing kids.
He was seen perching on the nook of a picket bench as hordes of individuals filmed and took photos of him by way of the metallic bars on the Central Palace of Justice, in Damascus.
In February 2011, he ordered the arrest of perpetrators who graffitied partitions within the metropolis of Daraa, calling for the tip of the regime.
Police apprehended two teenage boys after they discovered their names scribbled subsequent to offending graffiti, which was sprayed on a wall outdoors their faculty.
The youngsters had been tortured and overwhelmed whereas imprisoned, till the precise culprits, aged between 18 and 30, confessed.
The therapy of the varsity boys, below Najib’s command, catalysed additional demonstrations, resulting in police firing on protestors on March 18 and killing a number of folks.
In April 2011, a separate teenage boy known as Hamza al-Khateeb vanished after a protest. The physique of the 13-year-old boy was returned to his mother and father closely mutilated.
Najib was faraway from his function by Assad, branded the ‘Butcher’ for killing his personal folks, after the atrocities. Nevertheless, he was reinstated in the identical function within the north-west Idlib province.
The crackdown by safety forces on peaceable pro-democracy protests sparked the civil warfare, which killed greater than half one million folks and displaced thousands and thousands of others.
Because the civil warfare progressed by way of its 13 years, Najib was more and more sidelined by the regime.
He stayed in Damascus after Assad fled the nation in December 2024, following the toppling of the federal government by rebels, and was arrested in January 2025.
