Last week, a disgraced former brigadier general in a striped prison uniform stepped into an iron cage at Damascus’s Palace of Justice.
Atef Najib, who once declared “I am god in Daraa,” before killing his victims, was finally where Syrians had long dreamed of seeing him: behind bars, answering for his crimes, becoming the first official of the ousted regime to face a public trial inside Syria.
The long-awaited trial began 16 months after the authoritarian regime of Bashar al Assad was overthrown in a lightning-quick operation by opposition forces. The ousted leader fled to Moscow with his wife and children besides his brother Maher.
Najib, a cousin of Bashar al Assad and the architect of one of the uprising’s earliest and most savage crackdowns, ran a security branch that snatched children off the streets, subjected them to electric shocks and mutilation, and returned their broken bodies to their families weeks later.
Facing him, placed on a panel in the courtroom, was a photograph of Hamza al-Khatib, the 13-year-old from Daraa whose tortured body became the defining symbol of Syria’s uprising.
The presiding judge, Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, opened the session with the words: “Today we begin the first trials of transitional justice in Syria.”
Al-Aryan had himself been sentenced to death in absentia by the Assad regime after publicly defecting from Syria’s judiciary in 2013. He had spent over a decade in exile before returning after Assad’s fall to head the very court now trying the oppressive regime’s men.
Crowds gathered outside the court in celebration, as families of victims, including some from Daraa, attended the session. Many in attendance, who had been wanted by security forces under Assad only a few years ago, now found themselves witnesses to a long-awaited moment of accountability.
For many Syrians who spent years in exile with little more than a distant hope of return, the sight of former regime officials in the dock is a turning point, according to Nedal al Amari, a political activist from Daraa.
“I never expected that this day would come. For years, I used to tell myself that my only dream was to one day be buried in Syria after I die, that was the most I allowed myself to hope for,” Al Amari tells TRT World.
“But seeing the criminals behind the bars of a Syrian courtroom changed something in me. It made me truly believe, for the first time, that justice will prevail, no matter how long it takes, no matter the cost.”
“This moment felt like the beginning of something I had stopped believing was possible.”
Related
What comes next
Sunday’s session was preparatory and only a beginning for long-awaited justice.
Najib is expected back before the court on May 10, when substantive proceedings begin. But he will not be alone for long.
A judicial source told AFP that future in-person trials will include Wassim al Assad, another relative of the ousted president, former grand mufti Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun, as well as military and security officials arrested by the new authorities in recent months.
Bashar al Assad himself, along with his brother Maher, the former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armoured Division, are charged in absentia, accused of killings, torture, extortion, and drug trafficking.
