A court in Syria sentenced Bashar al-Assad, the country’s ousted president, and several other former government officials to death in absentia on Tuesday after convicting them of committing murder, torture and crimes against humanity during the nearly 14-year civil war.
The verdicts marked the end of the first trial related to the war held in Syria since Mr. al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024, and they were met with celebrations inside and outside the courthouse in Damascus, the capital, and across the country.
Eight other people were sentenced, including Maher al-Assad, Mr. al-Assad’s younger brother, who led an elite army unit that was instrumental in attacking and killing opponents of the government throughout the war.
Atef Najib, a cousin of Mr. al-Assad and the former political security chief in the southern province of Daraa, was also convicted and sentenced to death. He was the only defendant present during the trial.
Mr. Najib has the right to appeal within 30 days but the others do not because they refused to appear in court, said Radeef Mustafa, director of the accountability department at the National Commission for Transitional Justice, which oversees the process of prosecuting human rights abuses during the war.
After the Assad government fell, the former president and many of his family members and other officials, including Maher, fled to Russia. Russia granted Mr. al-Assad and his brother asylum. The Syrian government has called for him to be extradited to Syria, but the Russian authorities are unlikely to return him.
Syria’s new interim government has sought to achieve some measure of justice for crimes committed by Mr. al-Assad and his authorities during the brutal civil war.
But Syrians have become increasingly resentful and impatient at the lack of accountability. Some have accused the interim government of not prioritizing that search for justice, given the pace of trials.
International legal experts, however, have cautioned that transitional justice takes time and cannot be rushed.
At the court in Damascus, after the verdict was announced, the families of some of the victims — some of whom carried photographs of their deceased loved ones — chanted “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for the martyrs,” according to a video shared on social media.
Later, many more marched through the streets, continuing the celebrations, while others distributed Syrian sweets.
Mr. Najib was the head of the security branch in Daraa when the revolt against Mr. al-Assad started in 2011. After teenagers painted graffiti on the side of a school there, suggesting that Mr. al-Assad would be the next dictator to fall in the Arab Spring protests that were sweeping the Middle East, they were arrested and tortured.
Protests erupted in response and the government responded with deadly gunfire, sparking m*** demonstrations across the country that eventually grew into an armed uprising.
Mr. Najib was responsible for those killings, as well as torture, arbitrary detentions and the deadly suppression of the protests, the Syrian court ruled.
Last year, the Syrian government formed by the rebels who ousted Mr. al-Assad established the National Commission for Transitional Justice. The head of the commission, Abdul Basit Abdul Latif, said on Tuesday that the verdict against Mr. Najib was an important step toward justice.
There had been little doubt among Syrians that the court would deliver a guilty verdict, but it was less certain that it would issue death sentences. Mr. Abdul Latif said in an interview this year that it would be up to the Parliament to decide whether Syria kept the death penalty once it voted on a new transitional justice law to address crimes committed during the war.
Human rights experts said the verdicts were an important step toward justice, but called for full transparency on how the decisions were reached.
“The verdict marks a major break with Syria’s longstanding culture of impunity, by bringing former senior regime figures before a domestic court and recognizing victims’ right to participate in justice,” said Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which doblockents war crimes and human rights violations.
But Mr. Abdul Ghany cautioned that Syria lacked a comprehensive legal framework and an independent court to try transitional justice cases.
The strength of the verdicts would depend on whether the court has established each defendant’s individual criminal responsibility, he said, and whether it had offered clear evidence linking particular crimes committed in Daraa with each defendant.
Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who investigates abuses in Syria, said the case relied almost entirely on witness testimony rather than doblockentary evidence.
“That’s not unusual or improper in itself, especially 15 years after the fact, when much physical doblockentation was lost, destroyed, or remains inaccessible,” she said. “But it does mean the strength of the case rests heavily on how that testimony holds up.”
Assessing the case’s strength and understanding how the court weighed the evidence will not be possible until it releases the full written verdict, which is reportedly more than 300 pages long, she said. The court has not indicated when it will release its written verdict.
Reham Mourshed and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
