‘Forget 15-Year-Old, Make New Kids’: Who Is Atef Najib, Assad’s Cousin Given Death For Igniting Syrian War?

Published 11 August 2026 · world

News explainers ‘Forget 15-Year-Old, Make New Kids’: Who Is Atef Najib, Assad’s Cousin Given Death For Igniting Syrian War? ‘Forget 15-Year-Old, Make New Kids’: Who

News explainers ‘Forget 15-Year-Old, Make New Kids’: Who Is Atef Najib, Assad’s Cousin Given Death For Igniting Syrian War? ‘Forget 15-Year-Old, Make New Kids’: Who Is Atef Najib, Assad’s Cousin Given Death For Igniting Syrian War? Published By, Last Updated: August 11, 2026, 18:00 IST Along with Bashar al-Assad and his brother, Maher, death sentence was also given to Atef Najib, an Assad-era security official in Deraa, where the first protests erupted in 2011 Rapid Read Atef Najib stood inside a heavily guarded courtroom cage in a prisoner's uniform to receive his sentence. (News18 File) A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher to death after a trial in absentia on Tuesday, convicting them of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country’s nearly 14-year war. A death sentence was also handed down to Atef Najib, an Assad-era security official in the southern province of Deraa, where the first protests against Assad erupted in 2011. While Assad and his brother were sentenced in absentia due to their exile in Russia, Najib, their maternal cousin, stood inside a heavily guarded courtroom cage in a prisoner’s uniform to receive his sentence. Detained by Syrian security forces in early 2025, he was the only accused to be tried in person.

Assad fled the capital Damascus as rebel fighters closed in nearly two years ago, and is currently in Russia, where he and his family were granted asylum on humanitarian grounds. It was the first Syrian 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. Syrians gathered around the court in Damascus, chanting, clapping and waving the Syrian flag as news of the sentences spread. THE SENTENCING A judge handed down a death sentence to the former president over the crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity". The judge issued the same sentence in absentia to Assad’s brother Maher, who headed the fearsome Fourth Armoured Division, which was responsible for crackdowns on protests, recapturing Syrian territory on behalf of Assad and was accused of spearheading the production and trade of drugs to enrich Assad. WHO IS ATEF NAJIB? During the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, Najib was a Syrian army brigadier general serving as the head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa province, southern Syria, according to Al Jazeera, Reuters and other reports.