From exile to judge: Symbolism in Syria’s trial of Assad, former officials

On March 13, 2013, Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, a justice astatine Idlib’s Civil Court of Appeal, publically defected from the Syrian authorities – an enactment that led him to beryllium sentenced to decease successful absentia.

In December 2024, much than a decennary later, Bashar al-Assad’s regime – the precise 1 helium had defected from – was overthrown, and al-Aryan was capable to yet instrumentality to Syria’s judiciary.

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In the latest measurement connected al-Aryan’s travel from defection to exile to return, helium was the presiding justice connected Sunday astatine the opening of the proceedings of Atef Najib, a relative of erstwhile President al-Assad and the erstwhile caput of governmental information successful the confederate state of Deraa who faces charges of premeditated murder, torture starring to decease and crimes against humanity.

Al-Assad and his member Maher al-Assad, a erstwhile apical subject commander, are besides being tried successful absentia. Both men fled to Russia aft their 2024 overthrow.

Fadel Abdulghany, the laminitis of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), told Al Jazeera that the infinitesimal carries heavy symbolic weight.

“A justice erstwhile sentenced to decease by the Assad authorities for defending the regularisation of instrumentality has returned to the seat to use that aforesaid instrumentality to 1 of the regime’s astir extensively documented perpetrators of violations,” Abdulghany explained. “This reversal of powerfulness dynamics reflects the committedness of the regularisation of instrumentality truthful seldom fulfilled successful post-authoritarian transitions. The value of this infinitesimal lies not successful spectacle but successful its adherence to owed process.”

Defection and return

Al-Aryan was a judicial advisor during the aboriginal years of Syria’s uprising, which began successful March 2011, arsenic protests intensified and the authorities progressively relied connected security-based rule.

By 2013, helium decided that helium had to interruption from the Syrian authorities and defected successful a recorded connection that framed his determination arsenic a substance of ineligible and motivation responsibility.

“In airy of the work placed connected the shoulders of judges, who are the guardians of justness and truth, and arsenic a effect of the massacres committed by the authorities against civilians, children and women, … I denote my defection from the Ministry of Justice and my joining the Independent Syrian Judicial Council … to beryllium a beardown shield for justness and equality,” helium said successful the video.

After his defection, al-Aryan joined the judicial bodies of the then-Syrian Interim Government and became progressive successful gathering what was described arsenic a parallel judicial way successful opposition-held areas.

As portion of that, helium worked connected establishing alternate courts, handling ineligible cases and documenting alleged crimes committed by the present erstwhile regime.

In response, the authorities sentenced al-Aryan to decease successful absentia and confiscated his property, including assets aboriginal sold astatine nationalist auction.

After the autumn of al-Assad’s regime, al-Aryan’s sanction re-emerged successful June aft a statesmanlike decree reinstating dismissed judges. That process culminated successful his assignment arsenic caput of the Fourth Criminal Court successful Damascus, positioning him astatine the centre of the country’s archetypal transitional judicial proceedings.

Najib’s links to repression of Syrian revolution

The translation successful al-Aryan’s beingness mirrors that of the antheral connected proceedings successful his courtroom connected Sunday.

The presumption of the al-Assad household subordinate arsenic a apical information authoritative successful Deraa successful 2011 placed Najib astatine the centre of immoderate of the archetypal large confrontations betwixt civilians and authorities information officers. Deraa is called the “cradle of the revolution” aft authorities repression of protesters determination inspired al-Assad’s opponents successful different areas of the state to emergence up.

One circumstantial incidental – the apprehension and torture of schoolchildren detained aft scrawling, “The radical privation the autumn of the regime,” and the sidesplitting of 1 of them, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb – is wide regarded arsenic the spark for the country’s revolution.

Najib’s transportation to that incidental and the decease of Hamza is 1 of the reasons wherefore his proceedings is truthful important successful Syria.

The erstwhile authoritative was arrested successful January 2025 successful the Latakia region, wherever immoderate erstwhile authorities loyalists had taken refuge.

Transitional justice

For the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the proceedings is important due to the fact that of however it is being conducted and not conscionable who is being tried.

Abdulghany stressed that “this is neither a revolutionary tribunal nor a victors’ court” but a lawsuit that has moved done ceremonial ineligible stages, including apprehension by the Ministry of Interior, investigation, prosecution and referral to a transgression tribunal successful Damascus.

The charges see premeditated execution and torture starring to death, classified arsenic crimes against humanity nether planetary law. This framing, Abdulghany said, is deliberate: It places home proceedings wrong the model of planetary transgression standards, which is indispensable for the credibility of immoderate verdict.

Abdulghany besides highlighted the organization connection of the proceedings and successful peculiar the inclusion of the erstwhile president and his member arsenic defendants contempt their lack from the proceedings and from Syria.

“Physical lack does not magnitude to ineligible immunity,” helium said.

Despite this, Abdulghany stressed that the proceedings was not the extremity of the transitional justness process successful a state wherever hundreds of thousands of radical died and disappeared during the warfare and the five-decade regularisation of al-Assad and his father, Hafez. There is inactive small accusation successful galore of the cases of the disappeared and imprisoned. The SNHR has documented astatine slightest 177,000 cases of enforced disappearances since 2011 with the immense bulk attributed to the erstwhile government.

Abdulghany explained that accountability successful Syria cannot beryllium reduced to transgression trials unsocial and alternatively indispensable see 4 interconnected pillars: transgression accountability, truth-seeking, reparations and organization reform.

These, helium argued, indispensable relation unneurotic nether a unified operation alternatively than arsenic abstracted oregon sequential processes.

Abdulghany placed peculiar accent connected organization reform, noting that Syria’s judiciary was antecedently utilized arsenic a instrumentality of repression alternatively than justice.

“Without these reforms, transitional justness trials hazard being conducted done judicial institutions that person not themselves been transformed,” helium said, pointing to the request to dismantle exceptional courts and rebuild judicial independence.

Truth-seeking, helium added, is arsenic essential.

Families of victims person a close to cognize what happened to their relatives, and this close exists independently of transgression prosecutions, Abdulghany said.

“They merit answers,” helium said, adding that designation of truth, justness and reparations indispensable beryllium unconditional if immoderate durable reconciliation is to beryllium achieved.