Syria sentences absent former leader Bashar al-Assad to death

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has been sentenced to death after a trial in absentia convicted him of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest. His cousin, Atef Najib, who is a former security official, was also sentenced to death in Damascus. What's next? Assad, who now lives in Moscow, is expected to fight any efforts of Syria's new authorities to extradite him. A Syrian court has sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death after a trial in absentia, convicting him of a range of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country's nearly 14-year war. It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024. His exit ended decades of his family's iron-fisted rule over Syria, and a brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Assad, now 60 years old, 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. They were over the crimes of "premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity". It remains uncertain whether Syria's new authorities will be able to persuade Moscow to extradite Assad. Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death. Najib is Assad's cousin and the former head of political security in Deraa province in southern Syria's Deraa. In the courtroom, he appeared inside a cage as the judge delivered his sentence. 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. It spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.