Former Syria dictator Bashar al-Assad sentenced to death over 'war atrocities'

The ruling marks the first criminal conviction against the former president, whose family dominated Syria for more than half a century before being toppled in December 2024.

His younger brother Maher al-Assad, who commanded the regime's feared Fourth Division, received the same sentence, along with six other former military and security figures including ex-defence minister Fahd al-Freij.

Assad's cousin Atef Najib, the former political security chief in Deraa province, was also condemned to death — though unlike the others, he was present in the courtroom.

Najib was widely regarded as the figure responsible for the detention and alleged torture of a group of teenagers in Deraa in March 2011, after they were accused of scrawling anti-government graffiti on walls.

That incident ignited mass demonstrations across the southern province, which security forces met with a violent crackdown — a response that ultimately fuelled nationwide protests and tipped Syria into full-scale civil war.

Deraa is broadly considered the cradle of the uprising against Assad's rule.

Bashar al-Assad ascended to the presidency in 2000 following his father Hafez's death

REUTERS

The court found Najib guilty of murder, the intentional killing of children under 15, and torture resulting in death.

Images from the proceedings showed him listening to the verdict dressed in a striped prison uniform, confined inside a cage in the courtroom — a scene Syria's new government has framed as a milestone in its pursuit of transitional justice.

Assad ascended to the presidency in 2000 following his father Hafez's death, having never been the intended successor — his elder brother Basil had been groomed for the role before dying in a car crash in 1994.

A member of the Alawite minority, he maintained his sect's grip on the military and intelligence apparatus in a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation.

Assad's cousin Atef Najib, the former political security chief in Deraa province, was also condemned to death

GETTY

His rule was largely shaped by the civil war that erupted from the 2011 Arab Spring, when peaceful pro-democracy protests were crushed with lethal force by state security services.

The conflict claimed approximately half a million lives before rebel forces led by Ahmed al-Sharaa swept to power in a rapid 11-day campaign in December 2024, sending Assad and his family fleeing to Moscow.

The court indicated it would pursue international legal channels to prosecute the convicted men, though Russian authorities have previously rebuffed extradition requests for their former Syrian allies.

Nouha al-Masri, one of five prosecutors in the case, has spent 15 years awaiting this moment — and carries a deeply personal stake in the proceedings, having lost her brother during the March 2011 massacre at Al-Omari Square in Deraa.

"The verdict reflects the magnitude of the sacrifices we made, the sacrifices of the martyrs, the suffering and pain of the victims, the missing, and the detainees," she told the BBC.

"We have been waiting for 15 years to reclaim even a small part of our rights, for all those who have spilled our blood, committed crimes, violated our rights, killed, and tortured us."

For al-Masri, the ruling opens a new chapter rather than closing one.

She said: "Our demand is that this not be the end of the trials... In the new Syria, there will be no impunity from this day forward."