Syria sentences Bashar al-Assad to death in absence over killings, torture

DAMASCUS — Nearly two years after Bashar al-Assad was swept from power, Syria’s former president has been handed a death sentence by a Syrian court in the first conviction against him since the collapse of his family’s rule.

The court in Damascus convicted Assad in absentia on Tuesday over crimes committed during Syria’s nearly 14-year war, including premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity.

Assad was not in the courtroom to hear the verdict.

He fled Syria in December 2024 as rebel forces stormed toward Damascus, ending more than five decades of Assad family rule. He is now living in Russia, where he and his family were granted asylum on humanitarian grounds.

News of the verdict drew crowds around the Palace of Justice in Damascus, where Syrians chanted, applauded and waved the national flag. Similar scenes unfolded in Deraa, the southern city widely regarded as the birthplace of the 2011 uprising that ultimately grew into the devastating civil war.

Assad, brother and former security official condemned

The court imposed the same death sentence in absentia on Assad’s younger brother Maher al-Assad, the former commander of the powerful Fourth Armoured Division.

Maher was a central figure in the former government's military response to the uprising and has also been accused of involvement in the regime's drug trade.

A third death sentence was handed to Atef Najib, a former security official in Deraa and a cousin of the Assad family.

Najib was the only one of the three to stand before the court in person.

He had been arrested after returning to Syria and was tried over his role in the early crackdown on protesters in Deraa. His case is particularly significant because the events there helped ignite the uprising against Assad in 2011.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights had reported that Najib's trial began in Damascus in April 2026, with Assad, Maher and several other former senior officials listed as defendants in absentia.

‘As big as the sacrifices’

The verdict was met with celebrations by some Syrians who had spent years demanding accountability for killings, disappearances and torture under Assad.

In Deraa, demonstrators carried photographs of relatives and victims killed or detained during the war, including Hamza al-Khatib, the 13-year-old whose death after detention by security forces became an early symbol of the uprising.

Prosecutor Noha al-Masri, who attended Tuesday’s proceedings, said her own brother was killed during the crackdown on a Deraa protest in 2011.

“The ruling that came, as we expected, was as big as the sacrifices that Syrians gave for 15 years, as big as the suffering of the families and relatives of the martyrs.”

For victims’ families, the ruling represents a long-awaited attempt to put the former president's record before a Syrian court.

But it has also generated skepticism over whether the sentence will actually bring Assad back to Syria.

Death penalty could complicate extradition

Legal experts have warned that sentencing Assad to death could make his eventual return to Syria even more difficult.

Assad's refuge in Russia means the Syrian authorities would need Moscow's cooperation to bring him back. Russia has been one of the former Syrian government's most important international allies and provided decisive military support to Assad during the war.

Syrian lawyer and human rights advocate Anwar al-Bunni argued that the death sentence could effectively close the door on extradition. “This is performative justice, not transitional justice.”

Bunni said countries generally would be reluctant to extradite a suspect to a state where he faces execution, arguing that the ruling could therefore prevent Syria from securing custody of Assad and other former officials.

The concern strikes at a central dilemma facing Syria's new authorities: whether justice should prioritise the harshest possible punishment or the practical possibility of bringing suspects back to face trial.

A lightning fall after 24 years in power

Assad became president in 2000 following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had ruled Syria for nearly three decades.

For much of Bashar al-Assad's presidency, the government maintained close alliances with Russia and Iran while remaining deeply hostile to Israel and the United States.

But his rule was ultimately defined by the uprising that erupted in 2011.

Demonstrations demanding political change were met with a violent security crackdown. The conflict then expanded into a complex war involving Syrian government forces, rebel groups, jihadist organisations and foreign militaries.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, millions were displaced and Syria's cities and infrastructure were devastated.

Assad survived repeated predictions of his imminent downfall and remained in power even after losing large areas of the country to armed opposition groups.

Then, in late 2024, his government collapsed with startling speed.

Forces led by Ahmed al-Sharaa swept through the country in an offensive lasting less than two weeks. Damascus fell, Assad fled and his family's decades-long grip on Syria came to an abrupt end.

From presidential palace to defendant

The death sentence marks an extraordinary reversal for a man who once appeared firmly entrenched at the centre of Syrian power.

Assad now faces the verdict from abroad, with no immediate prospect of being taken into Syrian custody.

He also faces legal action beyond Syria. France has previously issued an arrest warrant for him over the 2012 bombing of a media centre in Homs.

The Syrian proceedings therefore represent more than an individual criminal case. They are an early test of whether the country's new leadership can turn its promise of transitional justice into a functioning system of accountability.

The challenge will be particularly difficult because the same state institutions once controlled by Assad are now being asked to prosecute the men who commanded them.

For Syrians who lost relatives during the war, Tuesday's verdict delivered a moment of symbolic reckoning.

But with Assad still in Russia, the most difficult question remains unanswered: