Syrian courtroom on Tuesday issued a dying sentence to detainee Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.
Decide Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan mentioned Wassim al-Assad was convicted of a number of murders and ‘homicide accompanied by torture and brutality… categorized as crimes in opposition to humanity and struggle crimes’, including that ‘he’s due to this fact sentenced to dying’.
Wassim al-Assad confronted a variety of fees, together with organising and main paramilitary teams since 2011.
He was additionally charged with collaborating in navy operations focusing on civilians in Jap Ghouta that resulted within the deaths of unusual Syrian residents.
He’s the primary member of the al-Assad household to be sentenced in particular person.
His sentence comes only a week after the brutal dictator was himself sentenced in absentia to dying for crimes in opposition to humanity.
Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad have been each sentenced in absentia as they reside in exile in Russia.
Decide Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, who additionally oversaw the dictator’s case, mentioned Bashar ‘used state businesses to commit struggle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.’
A Syrian courtroom sentenced former ruler Bashar al-Assad to dying in absentia
Decide Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan mentioned Wassim al-Assad (pictured) was convicted of a number of murders and ‘homicide accompanied by torture and brutality’
Additionally sentenced to dying 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 struggle.
Amid tight safety, Najib stood inside a cage sporting a prisoner’s uniform because the choose 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 likely one of the highest-ranking officers to be placed on trial.
Najib is a former Syrian military brigadier common 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 have 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 have been met by a brutal authorities crackdown and spiralled right into a 14-year civil struggle that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning insurgent offensive.
Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian navy’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 courtroom sentenced six former navy and safety officers in absentia to dying. These convicted included former defence minister Fahd al-Freij and Louay al-Ali, who headed navy intelligence in Daraa province in 2011.
Folks verify the injury 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
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 set of insurgent forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose chief Abu Mohammad al-Julani is now the president of the nation.
Beneath al-Assad’s rule, Syrian authorities forces killed civilians en masse as a part of its technique to defend in opposition to the civil struggle 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, an extra 154,000 have been forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained by authorities forces, whereas greater than 135,000 folks, together with ladies and youngsters, have been tortured, incarcerated or killed in Ba’athist jail networks.
However Mr al-Assad is maybe most notorious for his forces’ use of chemical weapons in the course of the civil struggle. In response to a examine by the International Public Coverage Institute, pro-Assad forces carried out round 330 chemical assaults between 2012 and 2019.
The most typical chemical used was chlorine gasoline, although Sarin gasoline and sulphur mustard have been additionally used as properly. All three are banned from use in struggle by worldwide regulation.
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 sort of equipment of merciless dying that we’ve not seen, frankly, because the Nazis.’
He added on the time: ‘Whether it is because it seems up to now, 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 additionally some very, very younger males and boys and ladies… It is surprising to me, as a prosecutor. I am used to proof not being so robust.’
Armed teams opposing the Assad regime seizing management of Aleppo on November 30, 2024
Photographs of Assad sporting speedos generated ridicule on social media following the autumn of his regime
The autumn of the Assad regime in Syria was extensively seen as being a serious embarrassment for Putin, who provided him refuge
The civil struggle additionally noticed the exodus of 6.6million folks from the nation, who all fled for worry of their lives.
These refugees contributed to the European migrant disaster that dominated the mid-2010s. UNHCR, the UN’s refugee company, acquired nearly a million asylum purposes 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.
The deposed ruler is now believed to reside in three residences in a luxurious high-rise with a mall downstairs in Moscow after his former ally Vladimir Putin airlifted him and his household in another country.
Since fleeing, he took up his previous job as a watch physician – a task he educated for in London as a younger man – to deal with the elite of Russia’s capital.
A pal of the household advised The Guardian in 2025, a yr 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 struggle in Syria started, he used to frequently practise his ophthalmology in Damascus’.
He educated in ophthalmology in London within the early Nineties, however was recalled again to his dwelling nation following the surprising dying of his brother in a automobile crash in 1994.
Shortly after, he entered navy academy and took over because the inheritor obvious to the regime.
Now he spends a lot of his time taking part in on-line video video games, regardless of being freely allowed to maneuver round Moscow and his nation villa outdoors of the Russian capital.
Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days taking part in video video games in his luxurious Moscow flat
A automobile 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
A common view exhibits a whole bunch of individuals gathered in Al-Assi Sq. throughout celebrations marking one yr because the metropolis’s liberation, in Hama, Syria, December 5, 2025
He has been supplied with bodyguards from a personal safety agency paid by the Russian authorities.
The pal mentioned he now lives ‘a really quiet life’, including: ‘He has little or no, if any, contact with the surface world. He is solely in contact with a few individuals who have been in his palace, like Mansour Azzam [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yassar Ibrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’
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 advised the newspaper: ‘Putin has little persistence 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 dying, was paraded in a cage sporting 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 wood bench as hordes of individuals filmed and took footage of him via the steel 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 top 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 college.
The youngsters have been tortured and crushed whereas imprisoned, till the precise culprits, aged between 18 and 30, confessed.
Atef Najib, sporting a striped jail uniform, sat seemingly impassive final week in a cage in a courtroom in Central Palace of Justice, in Syria’s capital, Damascus
One image discovered following the regime’s fall exhibits Assad in nothing however white pants and a vest, clearly posing for the digital camera
An image displaying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is taken by Rebels following the seize of his palace in Aleppo
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 dad and mom closely mutilated.
Najib was faraway from his function by Assad, branded the ‘Butcher’ for killing his personal folks, after the atrocities. Nonetheless, 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 struggle, which killed greater than half one million folks and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.
Because the civil struggle progressed via 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.
