A Syrian court today handed down death sentences in absentia for ousted president Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother, convicting them of crimes against humanity and war crimes tied to Syria’s 14-year conflict, which killed about half a million people.
The rulings by the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus mark the first convictions of Assad or figures from his closest circle since his family’s five-decade grip on power ended 20 months ago.
Assad’s fall culminated in a dramatic flight from Syria, with Russian president Vladimir Putin arranging for him and his family to be airlifted to Moscow.
“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan said during the hearing, which was broadcast live on state television.
Assad’s maternal cousin, Atef Najib, was also sentenced to death in the case after being convicted over his role in directing a crackdown in the southern province of Daraa, the unrest that helped ignite the uprising and later the civil war.
Under heavy security, Najib appeared inside a cage in a prisoner’s uniform as the judge delivered the verdict. Outside the courthouse in central Damascus, crowds gathered to hear the decision.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the government collapsed in December 2024 and were granted political asylum. Syria’s new authorities have called on Moscow to surrender the Assad brothers.
Najib, sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained and has become one of the most senior former officials to face trial.
A Syrian court has sentenced former ruler Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia
People check the damage at the scene of a Syrian regime airforce strike that targeted a neighbourhood in Syria’s rebel-held northern city of Idlib on December 1, 2024
A member of the security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government guards a checkpoint previously held by supporters of deposed president Bashar al-Assad, in the town of Ayn Shiqaq, in the coastal province of Latakia, on March 11, 2025
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.
Images of Assad wearing speedos generated ridicule on social media following the fall of his regime
Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days playing video games in his luxury Moscow flat
Armed groups opposing the Assad regime seizing control of Aleppo on November 30, 2024
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.
One picture found following the regime’s fall shows Assad in nothing but white pants and a vest, clearly posing for the camera
A picture believed to be showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wearing only speedos is taken by Rebels following the capture of his palace in Aleppo
A car burns following clashes between Syria’s new authorities and supporters of deposed president Bashar al-Assad near the town of Jableh in the coastal province of Latakia on March 10, 2025
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].’
Atef Najib, wearing a striped prison uniform, sat seemingly emotionless on Sunday in a cage in a courtroom in Central Palace of Justice, in Syria’s capital, Damascus
Najib was a former brigadier-general and head of political security in the southern province of Daraa, where uprisings against the oppressive regime first erupted in 2011
One image shows him in a khaki hunter costume with a gun and fur accessory, standing alongside friends who are also in costume
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria was widely seen as being a major embarrassment for Putin, who offered him refuge
A general view shows hundreds of people gathered in Al-Assi Square during celebrations marking one year since the city’s liberation, in Hama, Syria, December 5, 2025
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.
