Syria prosecutes first Assad-era official in Damascus syrian war news

Atef Najib, the former head of political security in Deraa province, has been charged with ‘crimes against the Syrian people’.

Syria has launched the first public trial of officials who served under longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, 15 years after the civil war began.

The trial of Atef Najib, the former head of political security in southern Syria’s Deraa province, began in Damascus on Sunday.

According to Syria’s government news agency, SANA, he is accused of overseeing a violent crackdown on protesters there during the 2011 uprising, and faces charges related to “crimes against the Syrian people”.

Najib, who is al-Assad’s cousin, was the only defendant in court for Sunday’s preparatory session for the trial, which continues next month.

Al-Assad and his brother Maher, the former commander of the Syrian Army’s Fourth Armored Division, have been accused in his absence. He, along with other former high-ranking security officials, has also been accused in absentia of murder, torture, extortion and drug trafficking.

A crowd gathered outside the court on Sunday to celebrate as families of the victims, including some from Dera, attended the session.

Speaking to Al Jazeera Mubasher, a spokesperson for the Syrian Justice Ministry said it was important to hold the trial publicly to ensure transparency and judicial independence as part of the transitional justice process.

Najib oversaw political security in Deraa when teenagers who wrote anti-government graffiti on the wall of a school in Deraa were arrested and tortured, a case that became a catalyst for widespread rebellion.

Further protests faced a brutal government crackdown and escalated into a 14-year civil war, which ended with the overthrow of al-Assad in a lightning rebel attack in December 2024. Al-Assad then fled to Russia, and most members of his inner circle have also fled Syria.

The government of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has faced criticism over delays in starting a promised transitional justice process after the civil war that left an estimated half a million people dead. But authorities are now moving more aggressively to prosecute officials linked to al-Assad.

On Friday, Syrian authorities arrested former intelligence officer Amjad Youssef, the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre in Damascus, when at least 41 people were killed.

In 2022, a leaked video showed Yusuf shooting civilians while being detained and blindfolded, with his hands tied.