It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in ​December 2024 that ended decades of his family’s ​iron-fisted rule over Syria, and the brutal war that ⁠killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

Assad fled the capital ​Damascus as rebel fighters approached nearly two years ago, and ​is currently in Moscow.

In a trial of former government officials on Tuesday, a judge handed down a death sentence to Assad over the ​crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one ​person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.

Atef Najib, ‌a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.

Assad, who was born in 1965, became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the family’s rule and ​the dominance ​of their Alawite ⁠sect in the Muslim-majority country and Syria’s status as an Iranian ally hostile ​to Israel and the US.

Shaped in its early ​years ⁠by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was defined by civil war, which spiralled out of the ⁠2011 ​Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy ​took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.