Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been sentenced to death in absentia by a Syrian court over charges linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the country's long conflict.
His younger brother, Maher al-Assad, a former senior Syrian military commander, was also sentenced to death in the same case.
Assad's maternal cousin Atef Najib, a former army brigadier general who headed the Political Security Branch in Daraa province in 2011, also received the death penalty.
The court found Najib responsible for the intentional killing of children under 15 and torture leading to death during the crackdown in Daraa, where protests against Assad's government began in 2011. The court classified the acts as crimes against humanity.
Bashar al-Assad fled Syria with his family, including Maher, to Moscow in December 2024 as Islamist-led forces advanced on Damascus and ended his rule. Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander, subsequently formed Syria's new government.
Najib remained in Syria and was later detained. He became one of the highest-ranking officials from the former government to face trial.
The ruling is the first against Assad and members of his family under Syria's transitional authorities, which began prosecuting figures from the former government this year, both in person and in absentia.
The Assad family ruled Syria for more than five decades, beginning with Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad. The uprising against Bashar al-Assad's government in 2011 developed into a devastating civil war that lasted more than a decade and killed more than half a million people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Millions of Syrians were also forced to flee the country, with large numbers seeking refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe.