A criminal court in Damascus has sentenced ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia, convicting him of premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity committed during Syria's devastating 14-year civil war. The ruling, handed down on Tuesday by judge Fakhr al-Din al-Uryan of Criminal Court Number 4, marks the first formal sentence issued against Assad by Syrian authorities since his government fell in December 2024. In the cities of Damascus and Idlib — the northwestern province that served as a launching pad for the rebel offensive that toppled the regime — Syrians gathered in celebration after the verdict was announced.
The court found that Assad, as "the ultimate decision-maker", had mobilised state institutions to commit crimes including the intentional killing of civilians and children, mass torture and arbitrary imprisonment. His brother Maher al-Assad, who commanded the feared Fourth Division and served as the regime's top security official, was also sentenced to death in absentia, along with seven other fugitives including former defence minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij. The only defendant physically present in court was Atef Najib, Assad's cousin and former head of political security in Daraa, a city in southern Syria that became the cradle of the 2011 uprising. Najib was convicted of ordering the detention and torture of 15 schoolchildren who had painted anti-government slogans on a wall — an act that sparked the mass protests which eventually engulfed the country. He heard the verdict from a defendants' cage, dressed in a prison uniform.
Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000 at the age of 34, inheriting the presidency from his father Hafez, who had ruled Syria for nearly three decades. Trained as an ophthalmologist in London, he was initially cast as a potential reformer, but his legacy was ultimately defined by his regime's response to the Arab Spring protests that began in 2011. Government forces killed, arrested and tortured civilians on a vast scale, drawing repeated condemnation from United Nations investigators and triggering a war that killed an estimated half a million people and displaced millions more. Assad and his family fled to Moscow as rebels closed in on Damascus in December 2024, ending more than 53 years of Assad family rule in just 11 days.
The practical enforceability of the sentence remains deeply uncertain. Russia, which was a key military backer of Assad during the war, has granted him asylum and previously declined extradition requests. Syrian authorities say they will pursue international legal avenues, but analysts note that enforcement depends entirely on Assad leaving Russian territory. This Syrian trial forms part of a broader transitional justice process; European courts, applying the principle of universal jurisdiction, have already prosecuted former Syrian security officials, and France issued arrest warrants against Assad in 2023 linked to chemical weapons attacks.
The verdict carries significant symbolic weight for Syria's new authorities, who have presented such proceedings as essential to national reconciliation. The country continues to grapple with serious violence: roughly 1,500 mostly Alawite civilians — members of the Muslim minority sect to which Assad belongs — were killed in retaliatory attacks in March 2025, and more than 1,700 people died in sectarian massacres in the Druze-majority southern province of Suweida in July 2025. Experts say credible accountability mechanisms, including high-profile trials such as this one, will be critical to preventing further intercommunal bloodshed.