Syrian court sentences Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia
A Syrian court has sentenced former president Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia, in a verdict that resonated across the country as a landmark moment in the aftermath of decades of family rule. According to Africanews, the ruling was delivered in proceedings held against the former leader, who has not been in the country since the collapse of his government.
Assad, who fled after the rapid fall of his regime in late 2024, remains in Russia along with his brother Maher al-Assad, a key figure in the former regime’s security apparatus. Syria’s new authorities have formally called on Moscow to extradite both men so they can face Syrian justice in person, a request Moscow has not publicly accepted.
End of a half-century of Assad rule
The downfall of the Assad dynasty ended more than half a century of rule by the family, which had governed Syria since Hafez al-Assad seized power in a 1970 coup. Bashar al-Assad inherited the presidency in 2000 and initially raised hopes of reform before the violent suppression of a pro-democracy uprising spiralled into a full-scale civil war. The conflict drew in regional and global powers, reshaped the politics of the wider Middle East and produced one of the largest displacement crises of the 21st century.
Russia had been one of Assad’s most consequential foreign backers, intervening militarily in 2015 to shore up his government against advancing opposition forces. With the regime’s collapse, Moscow’s military footprint in the country visibly contracted, even as diplomatic ties with Damascus’s new leadership have been maintained.
Across Damascus, residents gathered in public squares to mark the verdict, framing it as a symbolic closing of accounts with the former ruling order. Whether the ruling translates into the Assads’ physical return to Syria remains, for now, a question pending between the new government in Damascus and the Kremlin.
Sources
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