A Syrian court has sentenced former president Bashar al Assad to death in absentia on Tuesday for war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with eight other people, including the former head of security of the Daraa province Atef Nayib, the only one of them who is not a fugitive from justice.
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Al Assad, who fled to Moscow with his family when Islamist and rebel forces approached Damascus in December 2024, has been found guilty of the crimes of premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention, and other crimes against humanity, reports the Syrian news agency Sana.
As for Nayib, a cousin of the former Syrian president, the court has found proven that as head of security of Daraa he supervised the torture and other crimes that occurred during the 2011 protests in that province in the south of the country, as part of the regional Arab Spring revolution.
The Syrian Army crushed the uprising after ten days of siege on the city. Some NGOs estimate 224 civilians killed, including many minors, as well as 81 soldiers killed by shots in the back, probably after refusing to suppress the revolts.
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The brutal repression by the Syrian Army in Daraa would end up becoming one of the catalysts of the civil war; a devastating conflict that ended in December 2024, when a combined offensive of armed groups led by the jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), led by the current Syrian president, Ahmed al Shara, ended up overthrowing Al Assad.
Alongside them, the fugitives Maher Hafez al Assad, younger brother of the former Syrian president, army general and one of the most feared figures during those years; and the former Minister of Defense and deputy commander of the Armed Forces, Fahd Jassim al Freij, have also been sentenced to death.
Similarly, the former senior army commanders Ayman Ayoush, Louay al Ali, Qusay Ibrahim Mahyoub, Wafiq Nasser, and Talal Fares al Aisami, all of whom fled after the fall of Al Assad, have met the same fate.
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