A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad riddled with bullet holes, displayed on the Hama municipality building after it was defaced following the city’s capture by rebel fighters, Dec. 6, 2024. (Credit: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP)
Syria’s judiciary on Saturday issued an arrest warrant in absentia against former president Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in December 2024, as part of an investigation into the repression of protests, arbitrary arrests, and clashes in Deraa, the southwestern city where the anti-regime uprising began in 2011.
According to the official Syrian news agency SANA, Damascus’ 7th investigative judge, Toufic al-Ali, issued the warrant following the initiation of public proceedings based on a complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, as well as a personal complaint lodged by the families of the victims of the events in Deraa on Nov. 23, 2011.
It was in Deraa that demonstrations against the Assad regime first broke out in early 2011, after the arrest and torture of teenagers who had written an anti-Assad slogan on a wall, in the wake of the downfall of Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak. Security forces responded with violent repression, arresting and killing dozens of protesters, before imposing a siege on the city beginning in April.
Charges: Murder, torture, unlawful detention
Judge Ali specified that the charges against Bashar al-Assad, who has been in exile in Russia since the takeover by former jihadist leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, include “premeditated murder, incitement to murder, attempted murder, physical and psychological torture resulting in death, as well as unlawful deprivation of liberty, in accordance with provisions of the Syrian Penal Code.”
The magistrate stressed that he had heard the prosecution witnesses and completed all legal procedures before deciding to issue the arrest warrant, which he described as a “necessary judicial measure, given the accused’s flight and concealment to evade justice.” He added that the warrant was “a legal step prior to its circulation via Interpol and the request for international assistance for its enforcement.”
SANA also recalled the arrest in January in Latakia of Atef Najeeb, who had served under the former regime as head of the Political Security branch in Deraa.
Assad is the subject of multiple judicial proceedings in various countries, notably in France, where in August seven arrest warrants were issued by French judges against former senior regime officials, including the ousted president, over the 2012 shelling of a press center in Homs that killed journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik.
However, France’s Court of Cassation overturned in July an arrest warrant issued in November 2023 by two investigative judges against Assad himself for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes related to the 2013 chemical attacks in Adra, Douma and Eastern Ghouta, citing the absolute immunity granted to sitting heads of state before foreign courts. Its president, Christophe Soulard, nevertheless stressed that “since Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and is no longer president, new arrest warrants have been or may be issued against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
