Security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government ride in the back of a vehicle moving along a road in Syria's western city of Latakia on March 9, 2025. (Credit: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP)
A Syrian court on Thursday sentenced two supporters of the ousted government to death and a third man, a ministry of defence official, to 20 years behind bars over violence that left hundreds of members of the Alawite minority dead.
The massacres last year, which authorities say broke out after supporters of deposed leader Bashar al-Assad attacked their forces, killed at least 1,426 people, according to a national commission of inquiry.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights monitor put the toll higher, at more than 1,700 people killed.
A court handed down its first verdicts in the trial over the massacre in September, with an Assad supporter sentenced to death over the violence and another defence ministry official handed a 20-year sentence.
On Thursday, the judge sentenced the Assad supporters to death for "an attack aimed at provoking a civil war and sectarian clashes," and for "the crime of leading and supervising armed gangs."
The defence ministry official handed the heaviest sentence was given 20 years in jail for murder.
Another second ministry official was jailed for three years for torture.
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