- Ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad, brother sentenced to death in absentia.
- Convicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity in 14-year conflict.
- Assad's cousin Atef Najib also received death sentence.
Damascus: A Syrian court sentenced in absentia ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad, along with his younger brother, to death on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria's 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead. Earlier this year, a media report revealed the leader had a severe "sex addiction" and had intimate relations with wives of several top officials.
Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad's maternal cousin Atef Najib for leading the crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war. Amid tight security, Najib stood inside a cage wearing a prisoner's uniform as the judge read the sentence.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after insurgents marched into Damascus in December 2024. Najib was later detained and became one of the highest-ranking officials to be put on trial. Najib is a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria's Daraa province under Assad in 2011.
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It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family's iron-fisted rule over Syria, 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 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".
Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death. 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 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.
"Sex addict"
Earlier a report by The Atlantic claimed Assad was reportedly obsessed with sex and smartphone games during the last months of his tenure. As per a report by The Atlantic, Assad had intimate relations with the wives of his senior officials and played video games most of the time. The report also suggests that the former Syrian president took absurd administrative decisions and did not put sufficient effort into saving his regime. One of Assad's lovers arranged women for him and later shared crucial information regarding the regime with Russia.
(With inputs from Reuters and PTI via AP)