The judge who sentenced Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia last week had been sentenced to death in absentia by the same regime several years earlier.
Irony in its purest form.
Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Arian retired from the Ministry of Justice in 2013 and joined the opposition judiciary. His return as a judge after President Assad was overthrown and exiled to Russia in December 2024 signals the country’s pursuit of transitional justice.
Some Syrians celebrated in the streets after President al-Assad and his brother Maher were sentenced to death. Words like “historic” and “symbolic” spilled out of my mouth.
After decades of brutal Assad rule under Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad, the model of impunity in Syria has broken for the first time, even if punishment is unlikely to be carried out.
Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions more and devastated the country’s economy.
Ibrahim al-Ashir, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, said the sentence handed down last week was “politically and emotionally significant, but it is also just part of the justice that many Syrians have longed for and still seek.”
For the UN, justice is just one of the “four pillars of transitional justice”, with truth, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence carrying equal weight.
What does Assad’s sentence mean for Syria?
When President Assad fled Syria and went into exile in Moscow in December 2024, he left behind the institutions and legal system that his family had spent more than 60 years building.
Mr. al-Asir stated that the latest ruling was “the first step in looking at the new state and asking these questions, that new rules and new institutions are emerging in Syria that distinguish justice under the Assad regime from justice after Assad.”
Another issue is whether this sentence meets the criteria for reliable transitional justice.
Amnesty International called on Syria to end trials in absentia and the death penalty, incorporate crimes under international law into domestic law, and reform its judicial system. The Ministry of Justice rejected the criticism, saying the process complies with Syrian law and includes the participation of victims and their representatives.
“We need not just one, but many incidents, especially targeting the highest ranks, to reduce the feeling of anger among the people so that Syria can move forward,” said Fadel Abdul Ghani, founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which has been documenting the victims of the Assad regime since 2011.
Mr Al Ashir agrees that more localized trials need to continue to bring to justice as many perpetrators of the previous regime’s brutal system as possible. “For many families, they are still searching for their missing persons, wanting to know where they are, what happened to them… Perhaps transitional justice will look very different for families in Homs than for families in Daraa.”
Few believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will extradite Assad, who is in self-imposed exile in Moscow. A death sentence would complicate any extradition under Russian law, but experts say the decision not to extradite the former aide to stand trial would be far more political than legal.
what is happening in syria
While the legality of transitional justice may be complex, the ruling is still seen as a landmark moment of justice.
When asked what else gives him hope for Syria’s future, Abdul Ghani replied: “I think what is working is freedom of speech, freedom of criticism…Syrians are free to speak and criticize the government, the authorities, even senior officials,” he said, adding that there are no repercussions for frequently criticizing the new government.
Ahmed al-Shara, a former rebel commander who has been Syria’s president since 2025, has been outward-looking since taking power.
After Assad’s ouster, Syria strengthened ties with the United States, which lifted most of the country’s crippling sanctions. Syria has resumed ties with neighboring Arab countries that had severed ties with Damascus during the Assad regime’s crackdown on protests, and in July welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to Syria, the first Western leader to visit since 2024.
Just a few days ago, Al-Sharaa reached an agreement with Moscow for two important Russian outposts in Syria. Bases on the Mediterranean coast will be transferred to Syrian control.
However, deep-rooted challenges remain in the pursuit of national unity in Syria. Tensions between the Syrian army and the Druze minority in southern Syria continue to cause deadly clashes. Al Ashir says there is still no breakthrough in sight. “The government still seems to treat this issue only as a security and military issue, but it is also a social issue.”
Friction also continues between Arab and Kurdish communities in the northeast of the country, and the government has been forced to respond to repeated violence against the Alawite religious minority along the Syrian coast.
Al-Asir also argued that Syria “still needs a national dialogue process to not only talk about all the divisions between ethnic groups and minorities, but also to talk about what Syria is and what we want Syria to be, and that process does not exist yet.”
