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See the full story · 10 sourcesThen Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in 2023. A court sentenced him to death in absentia on Aug 11.
Listen Summarise A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death for killings, torture, and crimes against humanity during the 14-year civil war. He was ousted in December 2024 after a rebel offensive ended his family’s decades-long rule and fled to Moscow. The trial also sentenced former security official Atef Najib to death for similar crimes linked to Assad’s regime. AI generated
DAMASCUS – A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Aug 11 after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes including killings, torture and arbitrary arrest during the country’s nearly 14-year civil war.
It was the first conviction against the 60-year-old, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule over the country, and the brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
Assad fled the capital Damascus as rebel fighters approached nearly two years ago , and is currently in Moscow.
In a trial of former government officials, a judge handed down a death sentence to him for the crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”. Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.
Assad became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the family’s rule, 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 US.
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. REUTERS
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