Fourth Criminal Court, Palace of Justice, Damascus

Rule Changes

Trying Najib and in-absentia defendants; presiding judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, himself a former Assad-era defector sentenced to death in absentia in 2013, returned to the bench after Assad's fall

On April 26, 2026, a brigadier general in a brown prison uniform stepped into an iron cage at Damascus's Palace of Justice. The general was Atef Najib, al-Assad's cousin, whose 2011 detention of Deraa teenagers lit the fuse of Syria's civil war; he became the first official of the fallen regime to face a public trial.

Updated May 31