A death sentence against a once-feared cousin of Bashar Al Assad has helped assuage a mass thirst for retribution in Syria.
However, thousands of members of the former regime and its associates remain at large. Some have even been spared prosecution as the new order seeks social and political alliances to boost its power.
Atif Najib was one of 6,000 former regime members on whom the authorities “have prepared files” for prosecution for crimes mostly committed during the 2011 to 2024 civil war, a Syrian official told The National. On Tuesday, a criminal court in Damascus ordered Najib, a former political intelligence commander and a maternal cousin of Bashar Al Assad, to be hanged.
About 40 per cent of those 6,000 have been apprehended, the official said, acknowledging that the government led by President Ahmad Al Shara has not moved against others who played major roles in the former regime. The state is obliged to act if lawsuits against them are lodged, he added.
Najib was convicted for his role in the deadly suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in the southern province of Deraa, the cradle of the 2011 revolt. The crackdown by the Alawite-dominated system prompted a violent backlash by many among the majority Sunni population.
By the end of the year, Syria was in civil war. Bashar Al Assad and most of the upper level of the ruling elite fled to Russia when the regime was ousted in December 2024 by militant groups led by Mr Al Shara.
The court sentenced Al Assad and six other former regime operatives to death in absentia in the same case, although the official said Russia has shown no indication that it will hand over the former president, or others among the top echelons of his regime who also fled to Moscow. Russia had given Al Assad asylum for what officials described as humanitarian reasons. This week, Damascus announced a deal with Russia on the future of Russian military bases in Syria, without mentioning Al Assad.
The sentencing of Al Assad was necessary to affirm that the government is committed to “the revolutionary narrative”, based on a clean break from Syria's dictatorial past, the official said.
Revenge killings of those seen as Assad regime collaborators, meanwhile, have been carried out almost daily in Syria. Mass killings have also taken place against Alawites, the minority to which Bashar Al Assad belongs that underpinned the former dictatorship.
Anas Al Khatib, who was among the young generation of civil figures who emerged during the revolt, said the authorities have spared some of the Alawite figures of the previous regime in a bid to build bonds within the community.
However, the best assurance for the Alawites in the new Syria is to deal “with the society directly and isolate from the officials and officers of the old regime”, he added, describing the quest for justice and civil peace as being in crisis. He expected more revenge killings if “an institutional approach is not adopted”
Mr Al Khatib pointed to former warlord Fadi Saqr and businessman Khaled Al Ahmad. Mr Saqr headed the notorious National Defence militia, perceived widely as having committed numerous transgressions during the civil war. Mr Al Ahmad, who was a confidante of Al Assad in the first half of the war, helped found and finance the militia.
Mr Saqr has been spared, although Amjad Youssef, a militiaman linked to him, has been arrested over the Tadamon massacre, one of the highest-profile killings by Assad's loyalists during the civil war. “May God keep the joy coming, with Amjad Youssef and Fadi Saqr becoming the follow-up,” the Co-ordination Committee of the neighbourhood, a civil group that has been championing the rights of the victims, said on its Facebook page.
Reports suggest both Mr Saqr and Mr Al Ahmad have been acting as a liaison between the new authorities and the Alawites.
Sadeq Abbara, who was a prominent civil figure in the revolt in his home province of Homs, said that Mr Saqr may have collaborated with the rebels during the 11-day offensive that ousted the regime in December 2024. However, keeping Mr Saqr free until now constitutes a “scandal”, he added.
He said Mr Saqr had also lost his value as an Alawite ally in the new order when former National Defence militiamen participated in attacks on the security forces in the Alawite coastal heartland in March last year. The government described the events then as an insurgency. The UN Commission of Inquiry in Syria said war crimes were probably committed by government forces as well as former Assad loyalists. Some 1,400 people, mainly Alawite civilians, were killed.
“Unlike Najib, who was in charge of hundreds, Saqr commanded thousands of militiamen. There is no transgression that he and his men did not commit, from mass murder to extortion, to robbing and killing people at checkpoints,” Mr Abbara said.
The bodies of people killed and discarded are still being discovered near the roadblocks of the National Defence militia, Mr Abbara said. “There is so much pent-up anger. Civil peace cannot be based on the trampling on the wounds of the people,” he said.
The hands-off treatment has also extended to Mohammed Hamsho, a Sunni tycoon who was linked to Al Assad's brother Maher. The same cannot be said for Samer Al Foz, another Sunni businessman who dealt with the former regime and who fled Syria, and Rami Makhlouf, another businessman and an estranged cousin of Al Assad.
The authorities have accused Mr Makhlouf of financing what it describes as lawless groups on the coast. Mr Makhlouf, who is outside Syria, fell out with the regime in 2020 and was stripped of his assets.
However, he still has resources and a base among members of the Alawite minority who dominated Syria from 1963 until the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.
