Bashar Al-Assad – A Syrian War Criminal
Bashar al-Assad, the ousted president of Syria, is a war criminal.
These are not mere words.
Last week, a court in Damascus sentenced him, his brother Maher and six former Syrian officials to death for murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity, all committed during the long civil war in Syria.
“Bashar al-Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said the judge, Fakhareddine al-Aryan, during a court session aired on state television.
The sentences were handed down in absentia and are therefore symbolic. Bashar, Maher and their families fled Damascus in December 2024 as Syrian rebels descended on the capital. They were granted asylum in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close ally of the Assad clan.
The Assads reportedly live in comfort in Moscow and are unlikely to face justice. However, Assad’s maternal cousin, Atef Najib, an official whose brutal crackdown led to a nation-wide uprising that triggered the civil war in 2011, remains in custody in Syria.
The case against Assad is based on multiple incidents, encompassing a 14-year system of killing, torture, disappearance, chemical warfare, indiscriminate bombing, attacks on medical facilities, sexual violence, siege, and forced displacement.
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry has described the major components of this repressive and totalitarian system in voluminous detail.
Assad, who inherited the presidency after the death of his father, Hafez, may not have personally ordered every execution or bombing. But the evidence strongly suggests that he was at the core of a centralized system of repression, even if he bore no personal responsibility for this or that crime.
The Assad regime engaged in deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Government forces repeatedly bombed and shelled civilian neighborhoods, often without distinguishing between military and civilian targets.
The regime was responsible for numerous chemical weapons incidents. The most notorious one took place in Ghouta, a Damascus neighborhood, on August 21, 2013, during which sarin-filled rockets struck opposition-held areas. A United Nations investigation found “clear and convincing evidence” that sarin had been used. Its secretary-general condemned the use of chemical weapons as a war crime.
Subsequent international investigations attributed several other chemical attacks to Syrian forces.
Assad’s security services operated a network of more than 100 detention centers in which prisoners were systematically tortured, sexually abused, starved and subjected to other forms of cruel treatment.
Tens of thousands of Syrians were arrested and disappeared, often without charges or judicial process. Enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention and imprisonment were common, according to the United Nations.
Government forces and pro-government militias carried out killings of civilians and suspected opponents, including summary executions.
Assad’s forces repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics and medical workers, sometimes because they were treating people regarded as opponents. A U.S. congressional report documented hundreds of attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of hundreds of medical personnel.
Government forces besieged opposition-held communities, restricting food, medicine and humanitarian assistance. Siege tactics were used to pressure civilians into surrender and displacement.
Bombardments, sieges, destruction of civilian infrastructure and other tactics were deployed to drive civilians from opposition-held territory. In its investigation of the 2019–20 Idlib campaign, the United Nations found that systematic attacks by government forces led to forcible transfers, murders and other crimes against humanity.
The Syrian Air Force dropped crude barrel bombs packed with explosives and shrapnel on residential areas. Since these weapons could not reliably discriminate between civilian and military targets, their use in populated areas was regarded as unlawful.
Although he seems immune from prosecution, Assad and his cohorts cannot evade moral responsibility for these crimes. Assad, like his father before him, treated Syria as his fiefdom and brooked no meaningful dissent.
It is scandalous that they likely will not have to pay for their crimes.