Assad cousin charged in landmark trial over Deraa 2011 crackdown

Trial session and charges

Atef Najib, a cousin of Bashar al-Assad and former head of political security in Deraa, appeared in the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus for the second session of a landmark trial. Najib, wearing a striped prison uniform and appearing in a cage, faces at least 10 criminal counts including murder, torture and responsibility for massacres tied to the violent 2011 crackdown on antigovernment protesters that helped spark Syria’s civil war. Seventy-five plaintiffs have filed cases and are expected to testify; relatives of victims, members of the National Transitional Justice Commission and representatives of international legal and humanitarian organisations attended. The court held an open session of about an hour before moving to a closed session to protect some witnesses. Najib first had a preparatory hearing on April 26, but this was the first substantive day of proceedings.

Context and significance

Najib was arrested in January 2025 during a security campaign targeting remnants of the former government in Latakia — a detention seen as one of the most significant of former security officials because of his role in Deraa when teenagers were reportedly arrested and tortured after scrawling antigovernment graffiti. The trial is being framed as the first concerted effort inside Syria to hold Assad-era officials accountable; President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher are being tried in absentia after Assad fled to Russia in December 2024 and many members of his inner circle also left the country. The interim government of Ahmed al-Sharaa has faced criticism over delays in implementing transitional justice after a conflict that killed an estimated half a million people, but authorities now appear to be moving more aggressively to prosecute figures linked to the former regime, as reported by Al Jazeera

This story has also been reported by: Deutsche Welle, Enab Baladi, The Syrian Observer