The first public trial in Syria of officials linked to the rule of former President Bashar al-Assad opened in Damascus on Sunday.

Atef Najib, a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria’s Daraa province under Assad, and who is also a cousin of the former president, appeared in the courtroom to face charges related to “crimes against the Syrian people,” the state-run news agency SANA reported.

Najib was in that position in 2011 when teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s government security forces.

The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiralled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ousting in December 2024 in a lightning rebel offensive. Assad fled to Russia, while most members of his inner circle also escaped Syria.

Assad himself and his brother, Maher, former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armored Division – which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centres – were charged in absentia, along with a number of other former high-ranking security officials.