The first accused, Bashar al-Assad.
This is what Criminal Court Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Erian said, and the court chamberlain echoed after him in his loud voice, at the beginning of the first session of the transitional justice trials in Syria.
The person being called, who ruled Syria for about a quarter of a century after another quarter of a century under the rule of his father Hafez, was not in the Palace of Justice in Damascus, and perhaps he followed it from his residence in the Russian capital, Moscow, to which he fled after the success of the revolution in removing him on December 8, 2024.
Bashar was not present, nor was his brother Maher, the third defendant, but their cousin Atef Najeeb was present, not at the headquarters of the Political Security Branch in the city of Daraa, which he headed when the Syrian revolution began from there in 2011, but rather he stood handcuffed in a cage in one of the corners of the courtroom and was called as the third defendant.
Do not underestimate the joy of the Syrians at the start of the trial of those who accuse them of killing and torturing hundreds of thousands, while a number of the victims’ families were keen to come to the courtroom demanding justice, and some of them called for the execution of Atef Najeeb by hanging in the courtyard of the Al-Omari Mosque in Daraa, as it is the place that witnessed the first massacres at the beginning of the events.
This is about emotions, so what about the law?
A spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Justice told Al Jazeera’s correspondent from inside the Palace of Justice in Damascus that this trial came after all necessary legal procedures had been completed.
He added that this type of case requires time to collect evidence and testimonies and complete the legal process, noting that holding the trial publicly comes within the framework of enhancing transparency and independence of the judiciary, and within the transitional justice stage.
The Syrian official confirmed that this session represents the beginning of a series of trials that will not stop, and include a number of those involved in serious violations.
As for the Public Prosecutor in Damascus, Hossam Khattab, he pointed out that Najib’s appearance in the dock carries a great symbolic significance, as he is one of the first officials to give orders to shoot peaceful demonstrators in Daraa Governorate (southern Syria), noting that this trial represents the actual beginning of the transitional justice process from “the first to commit violations against the Syrians.”
Khattab explained that the choice of the former security official to open the trials of symbols of the former regime reflects a clear approach to holding those responsible accountable for the crimes that occurred since the beginning of the events, stressing that the Syrian state and the judiciary are serious about holding accountable everyone whose hands are stained with the blood of Syrians.
Regarding the judicial procedures, the Attorney General said that the case went through multiple investigation stages, which began with the competent authorities in the Ministry of Interior, before it was referred to the investigating judge responsible for transitional justice, then to the referral judge, all the way to the Criminal Court, which began its first session today, in accordance with legal principles.
Since the fall of the previous regime in December 2024, a number of its symbols have been arrested, while a number of them have fled to other countries, and the authorities are seeking to recover the fugitives, led by the ousted president, who took refuge with a number of his aides in Russia.
Here is the peg..
Even though its first session today, Sunday, was limited to administrative and procedural aspects, and the judge announced that it would reconvene on May 10, it raised major questions that went beyond the emotional aspect and moved to the legal aspect, and questions about the possibility of tightening the screws on Bashar al-Assad in a way that would ultimately lead to his extradition from Russia and his trial for what he and his regime had committed.
It is not an ordinary judicial event, but rather a complex political-legal moment that reflects a profound transformation in the structure of power and the meaning of legitimacy itself. This is how the trial session was described by the professor of international law at the Arab American University in Ramallah, Raed Abu Badawiya.
In an interview conducted by our colleague Ahmed Hafez, Abu Badawiya explains his point to Al Jazeera Net, saying that the state that puts its former president in the dock, even if he is absent, is not only trying a person, but is redrawing the boundaries of the relationship between authority and responsibility, and between governance and accountability.
The Palestinian academic goes on to consider that this trial, in its political dimension, represents a declaration of a break with an entire stage and a reformulation of the official narrative that confirms that what happened during the reign of Bashar al-Assad was not state policy but rather actions that can be criminalized and held accountable, and therefore the matter must move from the field of politics to the field of law.
It is as if the researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Dr. Hossam Al-Hafez, wanted to interrupt the previous speaker, as he was keen at the beginning of his statements to colleague Ahmed Hafez to point out that joy over what happened and a sense of accomplishment, even if simple, should not lead us to ignore that transitional justice has its own frameworks and paths that have not yet begun in Syria.
Al-Hafiz, a Syrian national, believes that the form of trying Bashar al-Assad in absentia does not constitute a basis for condemning the former regime and its criminal policies, and even for those being tried in presence, the matter will relate to specific actions because Syrian law, which here is the Penal Code issued in 1949, does not include independent descriptions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, and the attribution of responsibility in it is based on direct facts and not on leadership responsibility.
Let us ask the direct question: Does this trial open the way for Russia to demand the extradition of Bashar al-Assad?
Abu Badawiyya believes that one of the strategic goals of this trial is to withdraw the “cover of immunity” that Moscow provides to Assad, and his conviction gives the international community a legal argument to demand Russia’s extradition; But he is quick to point out that this is true in theory.
On the practical level, the matter is more complicated, according to the Palestinian academic, “as the absence of binding legal obligations, in the absence of extradition agreements or international resolutions issued by the Security Council, makes it easy for Moscow to reject any request in this regard, whether on the grounds of the political nature of the trial or considerations of sovereignty.”
At this point, the Syrian academic seems more pessimistic, as he believes that using the expected sentence against Bashar as a pressure card to demand that Russia extradite him will not have much legal value, and may even be counterproductive.
Al-Hafiz explains the reason for this, explaining that the rulings issued according to a national law that lacks texts regarding international crimes do not create obligations on other countries or on the cross-border prosecution system.
Legal and political accumulation
While he stressed that this trial will not constitute a sufficient legal basis at the international level, such as filing a lawsuit before the International Criminal Court, for example, the Syrian academic believes that it will represent a documentary material that provides a record of evidence and testimonies that can be used later.
Not far from that comes the summary of Abu Badawiyah’s opinion, as he believes that “trying Bashar al-Assad in absentia is an important step, but it is incomplete. It is a declaration of intentions more than a final achievement, and the beginning of a path more than a conclusion. Its true value does not lie in the ruling that may be issued, but rather in what can be built on it: documentation, accountability, and legal accumulation that may lead, in a different political moment, to more complete and less absent justice.”
In conclusion, then, the trial of Bashar al-Assad and his symbols oscillates between being a “symbolic achievement” that restores the memory of the victims, and being a “political tool” in an ongoing conflict.
While Al-Hafiz sees it as having limited legal impact within the local framework due to the “oldness of the texts,” Abu Badawiyya describes it as “the beginning of a path” rather than a conclusion.
Perhaps we can say that the success of Assad’s trial may not lie in “bringing him into the cage” in the foreseeable future, but rather in turning his file into a legal “time bomb” that pursues him and his allies wherever they are.
