Published: · Region: Middle East · Category: geopolitics

Damascus Death Sentences for Assad and Najib Put Syria’s Power Shift and Justice Gamble on Global Display

A Damascus criminal court has sentenced ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher and cousin Atef Najib to death for murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity — mostly in absentia. The verdicts expose the new Syrian authorities’ bid to rewrite the war’s legal legacy while forcing regional and global powers to decide how they treat a former president now formally condemned as a criminal.

Syria’s new authorities have crossed a line most post-conflict states never approach: on 11 August, a criminal court in Damascus sentenced ousted president Bashar al-Assad to death for crimes against humanity, alongside death sentences for his brother Maher al-Assad and cousin Atef Najib. The rulings, issued largely in absentia, turn the former ruling family into formally condemned criminals in Syrian law and sharpen the stakes of any future dealings with them. Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan announced that Bashar al-Assad was convicted of premeditated murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity. The court held him responsible not only for direct orders but for mobilising state institutions to carry out systematic…

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