DAMASCUS: A Syrian court docket sentenced ousted chief Bashar al-Assad to loss of life on Tuesday (Aug 11) after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes together with killings, torture and arbitrary arrest through the nation’s almost 14-year conflict.
It was the primary conviction towards Assad, who was ousted in a insurgent offensive in December 2024 that ended a long time of his household’s iron-fisted rule over Syria, and the brutal conflict that killed a whole lot of hundreds of Syrians.
Assad fled the capital Damascus as insurgent fighters approached almost two years in the past, and is presently in Moscow.
In a trial of former authorities officers on Tuesday, a choose handed down a loss of life sentence to Assad over the crimes of “premeditated and intentional homicide of multiple individual and of kids, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes towards humanity”.
Atef Najib, a safety official underneath Assad, was additionally sentenced to loss of life.
Assad, who was born in 1965, grew to become president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the household’s rule and the dominance of their Alawite sect within the Sunni Muslim-majority nation and Syria’s standing as an Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the US.
Formed in its early years by the Iraq conflict and disaster in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was outlined by civil conflict, which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with lethal pressure.
