HIBAPRESS
Damascus witnessed, on Sunday, the start of the first sessions of the in-absentia trial of the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, along with a number of figures from the former regime, foremost among them the former security official Atef Najib, who appeared in person before the court.
According to a judicial source quoted by the "Agence France-Presse", this session falls within the transitional justice track, where procedures for an in-absentia trial against Assad and his brother began, in parallel with an in-person trial of a number of security and military officials, headed by Atef Najib, who has been in custody since January 2025. During the session held at the Justice Palace in Damascus, Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Arian opened the judicial path by announcing the start of the first transitional justice trials, explaining that it includes defendants in the dock and others who are fugitives from justice, before reciting the names of prominent figures from the former regime, including Bashar al-Assad and Maher al-Assad, who will be tried in absentia. The source indicated that the first session was essentially procedural, without questioning the accused Atef Najib, and that the trials will resume in a second session scheduled for the tenth of next May, while the in-person trials will later include other figures, including Waseem al-Assad, the former Mufti Badr al-Din Hassoun, and military and security officials. These developments come in the context of a new judicial track related to the post-fall of the former regime in December 2024, amid heavy files related to the victims of the Syrian conflict and the missing, whose case is still one of the most prominent challenges in the transitional justice phase.
