A Syrian court sentences Assad to death in absentia

It is a story that this morning’s edition did not report: a Syrian court has sentenced former president Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death in absentia, finding them guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes. This was reported by the US broadcaster NPR.

The ruling comes at the end of a fourteen-year conflict in the country, which according to the same source has caused around half a million deaths. The in absentia conviction means the two were not physically tried before the court: the ruling carries formal legal weight, but its enforcement depends on eventual capture or extradition, elements on which the available excerpts provide no indication.

The dossier available does not specify which court issued the ruling, nor its place within Syria’s current judicial architecture following the fall of the regime, nor the detailed charges beyond the general classification of crimes against humanity and war crimes. It is therefore not possible, on the basis of the material gathered, to reconstruct the trial process that led to the conviction, nor to establish whether other defendants are involved in the same proceeding.

The story currently comes from a single source, NPR; no independent confirmations are available in the excerpts gathered. It is, however, information of a formal judicial nature — a ruling issued by a state authority — rather than an informal accusation, which justifies its publication even in the absence of a second source, with due caution regarding the lack of cross-checking.

The figure of half a million deaths attributed to the Syrian conflict as a whole, reported by the same source, remains an overall figure referring to the entire span of the conflict and not to the ruling itself: it is useful for framing the scale of the Syrian civil war, but it is not a specific figure for today’s judicial proceeding.

At present there are no official reactions from third-party governments to the ruling, nor indications of timelines for a possible appeal. The question of where the two convicted individuals currently are remains open, on the basis of the material available.