On August 11, 2026, the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus issued death sentences for former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and their cousin Atef Najib, along with six others. In a country where the president’s office has long stood above the law, the judgment represents a milestone—the first issued by a Syrian court against the former ruling family.
But the proceedings were also plagued by glaring problems—most obviously, the imposition of the death penalty after an in absentia trial, which raises significant fair trial concerns. Such compromised proceedings are ineffective for building the rule of law or establishing a broader basis for individual accountability.
The charges behind the prosecution date from the oppressive campaign that began in the southern Syrian city of Daraa in 2011. The government’s arrest and mistreatment of children there, and its violent repression of ensuing protests, sparked a revolution across the country.
Najib, head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa at the time, stood trial in person for his role in the repression. The two Assad brothers—who both fled to Russia when the regime fell in December 2024 and were granted political asylum—were tried in absentia on a theory of command responsibility for the crimes committed across the country in the ensuing years. The court found that Bashar held ultimate authority over the nationwide campaign of killing, torture, and mass arbitrary detention, and that Maher commanded the Fourth Armored Division at the forefront of the crackdown.
The trial represents the first time that violations documented for years by survivors, investigators, and human rights organizations were presented before a Syrian criminal court, although notably the court relied almost entirely on witness testimony. Until then, the only trials had been in European courts exercising universal jurisdiction—principally in Germany and France, though also Sweden and the Netherlands.
However, because the Syrian court has yet to publicly issue what is reported to be a 396-page sentence explaining its judgment, basic questions remain unanswered about the legal basis for the court’s exercise of jurisdiction under domestic Syrian law (which does not currently codify crimes against humanity or war crimes, nor does it clearly establish command responsibility as a mode of liability), the facts proved and the standard for proving them, the evidence underlying those findings, and the adequacy of the rights provided to the defense. In addition, the speed of the proceedings demands scrutiny—the trial opened on April 26, 2026 and reached a verdict on August 11, after only nine sessions. This was a complex case involving high-ranking officials and large volumes of evidence. That presumably required considerable time to analyze, prepare a defense, question witnesses, and formulate a reasoned judgment. It is not unusual for cases of this complexity to span years, rather than months.
A key issue the opinion must establish is the individual criminal responsibility of each Assad brother—most plausibly on a theory of command responsibility, though the evidence may also support ordering or aiding. That is not established by virtue of an official’s position alone. Evidence must be presented that each man ordered or knowingly aided the criminality of his subordinates, or that he closed his eyes to their atrocities despite knowing of them and being able to stop them.
The reported charges reach beyond ordinary crimes. Alongside murder, torture, and unlawful detention—long defined in the Syrian penal code—the court invoked charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Because the penal code does not codify these, the published judgment will need to ground them in law.
This is not a technicality. Convicting Bashar al-Assad of ordinary murder would punish discrete killings but miss what made the repression a state project. The category of crimes against humanity in particular captures the systematic, widespread character of the regime’s repression. Crucially, the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity also allow modes of liability—above all, command responsibility—that are particularly effective in reaching a ruler who gave orders rather than directly carrying out atrocities himself. In addition, unlike common crimes in Syria, these crimes admit no statute of limitations. They also would align a Syrian prosecution with the universal-jurisdiction cases abroad and with any future international proceeding, making cooperation easier, from evidence-sharing to securing the surrender of suspects.
That the two brothers were tried in absentia is a further concern. International fair-trial standards tolerate trying a defendant in absentia only in narrow circumstances—most clearly, when he was personally served, understood the charges, and then voluntarily absented himself or fled after proceedings had begun. That is very different from trying someone who never received formal notice and was never present in court to mount a defense.
Syria issued an arrest warrant and has repeatedly demanded that Russia surrender the Assads, but there is no sign that either brother was formally served or appointed counsel to contest the case. The trial went ahead because they sit beyond the court’s reach, not because they formally waived the right to appear.
Human rights organizations oppose the death penalty in all cases, even ones as grave as this. The reasons are familiar: an execution is irreversible, so any error can never be undone; capital punishment has never been shown to deter; and the death penalty is incompatible with the human dignity that the new Syria says it wants to restore. These objections are sharper still after a trial held in absentia, in which the defendant was not present to test the evidence against him.
Syria is not obliged to abolish the death penalty—it acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1969 but never to the Second Optional Protocol on abolition, and it retains the penalty in law. But precisely because it still applies the penalty, Syria remains bound by the Covenant’s strict limits, including its requirement of individual responsibility, not simply a defendant’s political position, and a fair trial.
A verdict is not the same as its enforcement, for which the obstacle is political more than legal. For now, Vladimir Putin is shielding the Assad brothers. The real question is what might change that protection. Assad is an asset that Moscow can trade: his surrender could become a bargaining chip in a larger deal—say, sanctions relief in a settlement over Ukraine. A future Russian government, especially one that replaced Putin, might have an incentive to surrender Assad.
Another route to justice might be provided by the International Criminal Court, which the new Syrian authorities could join or consent to its jurisdiction. The ICC would face the same problem of gaining custody of the Assads, but its greater legitimacy and more rigorous fair-trial standards might allow a stronger case for surrender. That the ICC cannot impose the death penalty would make it easier for abolitionist states (all of Europe, for example) to press for his surrender. It might also better avoid allegations of victor’s justice, because its mandate would reach crimes by all sides, although that would expose Syria’s new authorities and their allies to scrutiny for their own conduct.
Leaving aside this particular trial, individual verdicts are not a substitute for a comprehensive system of accountability. That requires not only criminal trials for the most culpable senior officials but also efforts to document a broader pattern of repression, to publish and officially acknowledge the findings, and to offer some form of remedial action. Among important matters to address are the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared, and reform of the institutions implicated in violations to reduce the risk of recurrence. In practical terms, this means opening the archives of the security services, identifying the location of mass graves, providing compensation and support to survivors, and vetting the status of personnel in the security and judicial apparatus.
Given the scale and complexity of the alleged crimes, Syria may ultimately need specialized chambers or a mixed Syrian-international body capable of managing such cases. Any credible path must also reject selectivity. Multiple parties committed grave crimes in Syria across different phases of the conflict (as well as in the months following Assad’s departure), and any accountability effort limited to a single group of defendants or a single period risks losing its legitimacy by being seen as partial. Verdicts will derive their authority not from the severity of the punishment, but from the fairness and independence of the procedures that led to them.
