Sentenced to death in absentia the Syrian ex-dictator Bashar al-Assad
A criminal court in Damascus holds him responsible for crimes against humanity, along with eight other men from the regime, only one of whom is detained in the country
A Syrian court on Tuesday sentenced former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to death for various crimes, including crimes against humanity, premeditated murder, and torture. This is the first public sentence in decades against the Syrian leader, who was overthrown in December 2024 and fled the country. The court had to limit itself to sentencing Al-Assad "to death in absentia," as he lives in exile in Moscow, under the protection of Vladimir Putin.
Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Uryan, of criminal court number 4 in Damascus, read the sentence and declared Bashar al-Assad guilty of the "serious crime of premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, and also of the serious crime of torture and arbitrary detention, and of committing crimes against humanity." In the sentence, the court also considered that "the criminal Bashar al-Assad's contribution to the crimes was that of the highest responsible for decision-making, given that he mobilized state institutions to commit them," ruled the judge.
More than 570,000 dead and 1.5 million injured
The Syrian war left at least 570,000 dead and more than 1.5 million injured, according to estimates verified by UN agencies. The conflict, which lasted from 2011 to 2024, also caused millions of displaced people: there are still 5.5 million Syrians internally displaced, and another 3.6 million remain registered as refugees abroad. Even now, 15.6 million people require humanitarian assistance. Sednaya prison was the symbol of Al-Assad's repression. It became known by the nickname of the regime's "human slaughterhouse." Once it fell, the inspection of the facilities confirmed the inhuman conditions in which the inmates lived: mass tortures and executions were common in that hell.
On the other hand, the court has also sentenced to death eight more people linked to the Assad regime, including Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad, and his cousin Atef Najib, who is the only one present at the hearing. In fact, the sentence is part of the hearing against this latter man, Atef Najib, cousin of the ex-dictator and former head of the Political Security branch in Dera. Dera is the Syrian city where the popular revolts began in 2011, which led to the war that lasted fourteen years.
Najib is detained in Syria. With the start of the revolts, he was assigned to the north of the country and then hid. He was missing from mid-2011 until he was captured in a security sweep in the coastal town of Latakia on January 31, 2025. The rest of those condemned, with Bashar al-Assad at the helm, are fugitives from justice.
Since fleeing Syria in late 2024, Bashar al-Assad's life in Russia has been shrouded in mystery. Only an investigation by the German newspaper "The time shed some light on the new chapter in the ex-dictator's biography. Among other things, it was revealed that he lived in a luxury skyscraper in Moscow. The Russian secret services, the FSB, have him under surveillance day and night, and precisely this invisibility would be one of the conditions imposed by the Kremlin to guarantee his safety. It remains to be seen now what consequences Bashar al-Assad's death sentence will have, a judicial staging that everything suggests will have more political value than real effects.
New bilateral stage
Although Russia granted asylum to Bashar al-Assad after his flight, the new Syrian leadership has opted to maintain ties with Moscow. President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital on October 15, 2025, and for the second time on January 28, 2026, in discussions where the future of Russian military bases in Syria was a central topic.
This Sunday, in fact, the Syrian Foreign Minister announced the future of the two main Russian military bases on the Mediterranean coast, in what Damascus considers a decisive step towards a "new era of bilateral relations." Syria will assume control of the Hmeimim airbase, near Latakia, and the commercial area of the port of Tartus, while the military facilities at both locations will be converted into joint training centers.
The agreement, negotiated for approximately a year and a half, ends the use of these facilities as exclusively Russian military bases, while maintaining Moscow's presence in the Middle East, with privileged access to the Mediterranean. Since the fall of the regime, the Russian troops that still remained in Syria had been leaving the country.