Syria sentences Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia for war crimes and crimes against humanity

A Syrian court sentenced ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the country's 14-year war that left about half a million people dead and millions displaced or seeking refuge abroad.

The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus on Tuesday found al-Assad guilty of ordering the murder of civilians including children, as well as torture and unlawful detention.

The judge said witnesses had confirmed al-Assad was the ultimate authority behind the crimes and that he had used the instruments of the Syrian state to carry them out.

Also sentenced to death in the same case were al-Assad's younger brother Maher — also in absentia — and maternal cousin Atef Najib, who attended the trial.

Najib was found guilty of leading the crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war.

Amid tight security, Najib stood in a cage wearing a prisoner's uniform as the judge read the sentence.

He was convicted of crimes including murder, "the intentional killing of children under 15" and "torture leading to death".

The al-Assad regime's documented atrocities over 14 years include the use of chemical weapons, most notably a sarin attack on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus in August 2013 that killed an estimated 1,400 people, according to US intelligence reports.

The use of sarin was confirmed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The regime also dropped more than 80,000 barrel bombs on civilian areas, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Meanwhile, the most extensive documentation of regime crimes came from the so-called "Caesar photographs".

The evidence consists of 55,000 images of some 11,000 detainees who died from torture, starvation or execution in Syrian government facilities, smuggled out by a military police photographer known by the codename Caesar.

Amnesty International documented systematic mass hangings at Saydnaya military prison near Damascus, which it described as a "human slaughterhouse".

Moscow and Tehran-backed war criminals

Bashar and Maher al-Assad fled to Russia after opposition fighters led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa marched into Damascus in December 2024, effectively ending the war in the country.

The Kremlin sided with al-Assad during the war, providing diplomatic and military support to his forces between September 2015 and December 2024.

The Russian Air Force conducted tens of thousands of airstrikes, resulting in roughly 14,000 to 24,000 civilian deaths in incidents assessed as credible by monitoring organisations during that period.

Amnesty International documented six attacks in the opening months of Russia's campaign that killed at least 200 civilians in areas with no identifiable military targets nearby — attacks it said may have constituted war crimes.

The New York Times documented Russian aircraft hitting four hospitals within a 12-hour period in May 2019. Physicians for Human Rights recorded 244 attacks on medical facilities carried out by the regime and Russian forces over the course of the war.

Moscow's mercenary Wagner group also took part in the fighting on al-Assad's side, under the supervision of Russia's military intelligence agency GRU.

Al-Assad also closely cooperated with Iran and was considered to be a key ally in Tehran's so-called "Axis of Resistance," a loose network that also includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq.

While Tehran denied its forces took part in the war, it is estimated to have spent around $30 billion (€26bn) backing the al-Assad regime during the war and deployed several thousand IRGC Quds Force personnel to plan and lead campaigns, including the key 2016 battle to retake Aleppo, coordinated directly with the Russian Air Force.

Lebanon's Hezbollah deployed up to 8,000 fighters inside Syria at the height of its involvement, becoming a highly effective ground force crucial to the al-Assad regime. Iran also recruited fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, integrating them into Syrian-flagged units to obscure their origin.

After al-Assad fell in December 2024, the new Syrian government uncovered a network of tunnels around Al-Qusayr in Homs province linking Syrian territory to Lebanon, which Damascus said Hezbollah used for weapons smuggling throughout the war.

Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem publicly acknowledged the supply line's loss within weeks of al-Assad's ouster.

Torture, murder, drug trade

Maher al-Assad commanded the Syrian army's elite Fourth Armoured Division, which investigators and Western governments say was the backbone of state-backed illicit drug manufacturing and trade.

The regime heavily profited from the production of captagon, a cheap and highly addictive amphetamine-type stimulant that flooded Middle Eastern markets throughout the war.

Multiple governments, including the US and the UK, have sanctioned Maher al-Assad and a network of associates for their alleged role in overseeing the drug's production and export from regime-controlled facilities in Latakia and the Qalamoun Mountains in cooperation with Hezbollah.

Seizures in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Italy and elsewhere have amounted to tens of millions of tablets in single operations. Analysts at the New Lines Institute estimated Syria's captagon trade generated up to $10 billion (€8.6bn) per year at its peak, with the networks around the al-Assad family earning an estimated $2.4 billion (€2bn) annually.

After al-Assad's fall, the new Syrian authorities began destroying production facilities they found on former Fourth Division bases, although UN experts reported in late 2025 that significant stockpiles remained in circulation across the region.

Najib, who was detained in January, is one of the highest-ranking officials to be put on trial.

Najib is a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria's Daraa province under al-Assad in 2011.

Al-Assad and senior regime officials have faced legal proceedings outside Syria as well.

A German court convicted former Syrian intelligence official Anwar Raslan of crimes against humanity in January 2022 for overseeing torture and murder at a Damascus detention facility, making it the first conviction in any court for crimes committed by the al-Assad regime.

A Paris court sentenced three senior Syrian intelligence officials to life in prison in absentia in May 2024 for the torture and killing of a father and son in Damascus in 2013.

France also issued an arrest warrant for al-Assad himself in 2023 over chemical weapons attacks, and a second warrant in 2025 for the killing of a French-Syrian man in Daraa in 2017.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has not indicted al-Assad because Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute and the UN Security Council never referred the case to the court, despite the UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria documenting extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity by regime forces.