Syria sentences ousted Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia

DAMASCUS: A Syrian court has sentenced ousted president Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia after finding him guilty of crimes including killings, torture and arbitrary detention during the country’s nearly 14-year civil war. The ruling marks the first conviction against Assad, who was removed from power in December 2024 after a rebel offensive brought an end to his family’s decades-long rule.

Assad’s government was accused of widespread abuses throughout the conflict, which began in 2011 and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.

In a trial of former government officials on Tuesday, a judge handed down a death sentence to Assad over the crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.

Assad, who was born in 1965, became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the family’s rule and the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and Syria’s status as an Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the U.S.

Shaped in its early years by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was defined by civil war, which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.