Syrian Court Sentences Assad, Brother to Death in Absentia

A Syrian court sentenced ousted President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother, Maher, to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Syria's 14-year conflict, which left about half a million people dead.

The verdicts, handed down by the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since his family's five-decade rule ended 20 months ago.

"Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity," judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan said during the session, which was broadcast live on state television.

Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad's maternal cousin, Atef Najib, convicted of overseeing a 2011 crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that ignited the uprising and eventual civil war. Amid tight security, Najib stood in a courtroom cage in a prisoner's uniform as the sentence was read, while a crowd gathered outside the courthouse.

Assad and Maher fled to Russia after the government's collapse in December 2024 and were granted political asylum there. Syria's new rulers have asked Moscow to hand them over.

Najib, a former Syrian army brigadier general who headed the Political Security Branch in Daraa in 2011, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department that April. He was later detained and is among the highest-ranking former officials to face trial.

Under Najib's command, more than a dozen teenagers who had scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured — an episode that became a catalyst for mass protests against Assad's security forces. The government's brutal crackdown on those protests spiraled into the 14-year civil war that ended with Assad's ouster in a lightning rebel offensive.

Maher Assad formerly commanded the Syrian military's 4th Armored Division, which opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion, drug trafficking and running its own detention centers.