A Damascus court has sentenced ousted former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death in absentia for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 14-year conflict. <\/p>\n
The Syrian judiciary has delivered verdicts in a historic trial of members of the ousted regime. According to the Associated Press, a court in Damascus sentenced in absentia former president Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother Maher to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 14-year conflict, which AP estimates claimed the lives of roughly half a million people.<\/p>\n
“Bashar al-Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” announced Judge Fachareddine al-Aryan during a session broadcast live on state television. In central Damascus, a crowd of residents gathered outside the courthouse to await the announcement. These are the first convictions against Assad and his associates since a rebel coalition ousted him from power in December 2024, ending five decades of rule by the Assad clan.<\/p>\n
Alongside the former president, an in-absentia death sentence was handed down to his brother, Maher al-Assad. He served as commander of the Syrian army’s 4th Armored Division, which human rights defenders and activists accused of killings, torture, extortion, drug trafficking, and operating its own illegal detention facilities.<\/p>\n
In the same case, the ousted president’s cousin, former brigadier general Atef Najib, was also sentenced to death. Unlike the Assads, Najib was captured and stood trial in person. According to AP reports, the defendant listened to the sentencing dressed in a prison uniform and enclosed in a courtroom cage.<\/p>\n
Najib, formerly the head of the Political Security Directorate in Daraa province and targeted by US Treasury Department sanctions as early as April 2011, was responsible for overseeing bloody crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations. His decisions in 2011 to arrest and torture a group of teenagers who painted anti-government slogans on a school wall in Daraa directly sparked mass protests across Syria, with the brutal response of the security apparatus transforming them into a full-scale civil war.<\/p>\n
The ousted Bashar al-Assad, along with his brother and immediate family, fled the country in December 2024 during a rebel offensive and found political asylum in Russia. According to AP, the new Syrian authorities have already submitted an official extradition request to Moscow to carry out the sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Damascus court has sentenced ousted former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death in absentia for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 14-year conflict. Historic Verdicts Issued Following Regime Collapse The Syrian judiciary has delivered verdicts in a historic trial of members of the ousted regime. According to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}