Syrian court sentences Bashar al-Assad and brother to death over war crimes

A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia today for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.

The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.

His humiliating retreat from the country he once called home saw him cash in a favour with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who airlifted him and his family to Moscow. 

’Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,’ said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.

Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad’s maternal cousin Atef Najib, who was convicted of overseeing a crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war.

Amid tight security, Najib stood inside a cage wearing a prisoner’s uniform as the judge read the sentence. A crowd of people gathered outside the courthouse in central Damascus to hear the verdict.

Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the government’s fall in December 2024 and received political asylum. Syria’s new rulers have asked Russia to hand the Assads over.

Najib, who was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained and 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 Assad in 2011.

During his tenure, more than a dozen teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s security forces.

The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiralled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning rebel offensive.

Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armoured Division - which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centres.

The court also sentenced six former military and security officials in absentia to death including Assad’s brother Maher, who ran the army’s elite Fourth Division and also fled the country.

Those convicted included former defence minister Fahd al-Freij and Louay al-Ali, who headed military intelligence in Daraa province in 2011.

Al-Assad, whose brutal treatment of his fellow countrymen gave him the nickname ’The Butcher’, fled Syria when he was toppled in December 2024 by a collection of rebel forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani is now the president of the country. 

Under al-Assad’s rule, Syrian government forces killed civilians en-masse as part of its strategy to defend against the civil war that decimated the nation between 2011 and December 2024. 

The government is believed to have been responsible for killing 90 per cent of the more than 300,000 civilians estimated to have died in that period. 

Between 2011 and 2023, an additional 154,000 were forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained by government forces, while more than 135,000 people, including women and children, were tortured, incarcerated or killed in Ba’athist prison networks. 

But Mr al-Assad is perhaps most infamous for his forces’ use of chemical weapons during the civil war. According to a study by the Global Public Policy Institute, pro-Assad forces carried out around 330 chemical attacks between 2012 and 2019. 

The most common chemical used was chlorine gas, though Sarin gas and sulphur mustard were also used as well. All three are banned from use in war by international law. 

Stephen Rapp, the US’ former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, said in 2014 following the release of evidence of torture under the Assad regime: ’This is... the kind of machinery of cruel death that we haven’t seen, frankly, since the Nazis.’ 

He added at the time: ’If it is as it appears thus far, we’re talking about more than 10,000 individuals being killed in custody over the period from 2011 to 2013, including largely men but also some very, very young men and boys and women… It’s shocking to me, as a prosecutor. I’m used to evidence not being so strong.’

The civil war also saw the exodus of 6.6million people from the country, who all fled for fear of their lives. 

These refugees contributed to the European migrant crisis that dominated the mid-2010s. UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, received almost one million asylum applications in Europe by August 2017. 

Many European nations also had to temporarily host vast numbers of refugees. Turkey was the largest host nation, in 2023 holding 3.3million Syrian refugees in 2023.

The deposed ruler is now believed to live in three apartments in a luxury high-rise with a mall downstairs in Moscow after his former ally Vladimir Putin airlifted him and his family out of the country. 

Since fleeing, he took up his old job as an eye doctor – a role he trained for in London as a young man – to treat the elite of Russia’s capital. 

A friend of the family told The Guardian in 2025, a year after he was deposed: ’He’s studying Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology again.  

’It’s a passion of his, he obviously doesn’t need the money. Even before the war in Syria began, he used to regularly practice his ophthalmology in Damascus’.

He trained in ophthalmology in London in the early 1990s, but was recalled back to his home nation following the unexpected death of his brother in a car crash in 1994.

Shortly after, he entered military academy and took over as the heir apparent to the regime. 

Now he spends much of his time playing online video games, despite being freely allowed to move around Moscow and his country villa outside of the Russian capital.

He has been provided with bodyguards from a private security firm paid by the Russian government.

The friend said he now lives ’a very quiet life’, adding: ’He has very little, if any, contact with the outside world. He’s only in touch with a couple of people who were in his palace, like Mansour Azzam [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yassar Ibrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’

Part of this comes from Putin’s apparent dismissal of Mr al-Assad following the fall of the regime in Syria.

A source close to the Kremlin told the newspaper: ’Putin has little patience for leaders who lose their grip on power, and Assad is no longer seen as a figure of influence or even an interesting guest to invite to dinner.’

The former dictator was sentenced to death alongside Atef Najib, the former head of political security in southern Syria’s Daraa province, who was reportedly tried in person. 

In April, Najib was paraded in a cage wearing a striped prison uniform as he went on trial accused of mass shootings and torturing children. 

He was seen perching on the corner of a wooden bench as hordes of people filmed and took pictures of him through the metal bars at the Central Palace of Justice, in Damascus.

In February 2011, he ordered the arrest of perpetrators who graffitied walls in the city of Daraa, calling for the end of the regime. 

Police apprehended two teenage boys after they found their names scribbled next to offending graffiti, which was sprayed on a wall outside their school.

The teenagers were tortured and beaten while imprisoned, until the actual culprits, aged between 18 and 30, confessed.

The treatment of the school boys, under Najib’s command, catalysed further demonstrations, leading to police firing on protestors on March 18 and killing several people.

In April 2011, a separate teenage boy called Hamza al-Khateeb vanished after a protest. The body of the 13-year-old boy was returned to his parents heavily mutilated. 

Najib was removed from his role by Assad, branded the ’Butcher’ for killing his own people, after the atrocities. However, he was reinstated in the same role in the north-west Idlib province.

The crackdown by security forces on peaceful pro-democracy protests sparked the civil war, which killed more than half a million people and displaced millions of others. 

As the civil war progressed through its 13 years, Najib was increasingly sidelined by the regime. 

He stayed in Damascus after Assad fled the country in December 2024, following the toppling of the government by rebels, and was arrested in January 2025.