Published On 4/26/2026
The scenes of the trial of Atef Najib, the former head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa and a cousin of the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have topped the interests of the Syrian street and the discussions of social media platforms during the past hours.
The proceedings of the session brought to mind the first memory of the spark of the Syrian revolution that broke out in 2011, and between the cheers and tears, the video clips circulating from inside the courtroom showed “Najib” standing inside the dock, in the middle of a hall filled with the families of the victims and the families of the detainees.
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The session was accompanied by revolutionary chants that resonated in the throats of the attendees, reviving the atmosphere of the first days of the popular uprising in Daraa Governorate.
In the midst of this noisy scene, the lens of the Syrian journalist Ali Al-Issa documented a remarkable human shot of two women sitting in the back seats, crying silently and staring at the face of the accused, in a visual paradox that combined shouts of anger and tears of suppressed pain.
The video received widespread interaction, with activists describing it as a “living testimony” that summarizes years of systematic oppression. Journalist Ali Al-Issa commented on the photo he took, saying:
“Touching footage of the mothers of martyrs crying during the trial of the criminal Atef Najeeb. The pain of Daraa that has not gone away… Today in court, every tear that fell from the eye of a martyr’s mother was telling the story of a child, the story of pain, and the story of a homeland. Seeing the criminal humiliated is the first threshold of relief for the souls of our children who soared early.”
For their part, a wide range of Syrian commentators considered that the mothers’ tears inside the court were nothing but “tears of joy for justice and victory, filled with pride and dignity from the mothers of the great revolution,” in a very important symbolic indication of the beginning of the accountability phase.
A step towards “transitional justice” These public sessions come in a context that Syrian human rights activists and activists see as the first actual steps in the path of “transitional justice” in post-Assad Syria.
The participation of the victims’ families and their direct attendance at trial sessions constitutes an essential foundation for demanding their rights and holding accountable those involved in gross human rights violations over the past two decades.
Atef Najib’s name is closely linked to the start of the Syrian revolution, as he is known for his direct role in the incident of arresting 15 children from the city of Daraa in March 2011 and brutally torturing them on the grounds of writing anti-regime slogans on the walls of their school.
The humiliating and oppressive response with which Najib confronted the demands of the people at the time to release their children was the drop that spilled the cup overflowing, sparking street anger in Daraa, so that the scope of the protests would later expand and turn into a comprehensive revolution that overthrew the regime’s legitimacy and led to its overthrow.
