A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.
The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.
“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.
You know, I haven’t lived a perfect life. But unless things go in a real wild direction, at least I can say I’m extremely unlikely to ever do something so bad I get sentenced to death in absentia…
Man, I love it when presidents get sentenced to death for their war crimes
too bad likes of bush obama trump biden clinton etc will never face it…
Absentia, thats fun. Why not do netenyahu and trump next, and bin salman. And no, I refuse to capitalize those names, they will just have to suffer.
In my opinion, in the long run, if they let this stand, this is a mistake. They should commute the punishment to life in prison. This is what the newly democratic Greek government did in 1975 with the fascists who overthrew democracy in 1967. By letting them rot in prison they never became martyrs and they slowly lost all credibility as relics of a violent past. Greek democracy is better for it, even though all stripes of the political Left at the time considered the commutation to be a betrayal to the victims of fascist repression. This is one of those (rare) cases where the Centre-Right was actually showing some wisdom.
Different contexts of course, and a key difference is that Assad is not held by the Syrian government, which is also yet to prove its democratic bona fides.
But there is something to be said about disavowing the slave master’s tools after taking over the slave master’s house. Syria will be a better place without the death penalty, even for vile criminals like Bashar al-Assad.
But what happens when the authoritarians take control of the government after the dictators are in jail, and let all those criminals free. It’s currently happening in the US.
We haven’t imprisoned any war criminals though.
A couple people like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, sure, but they didn’t have significant sentences to pardon in the first place.
I think they’re talking about the 1500 fascist terrorists that were pardoned back into society by felon rapist traitor Donald Trump after violently attempting to end our democracy on Jan 6, 2021.
True, but I was thinking all the J6ers that were released and are working for the government. We haven’t jailed anyone like Trump because the US sucks.
We cant be sure martyring is really a problem till we martyr a few and view the effects, right?
Let them see a world grow isolated from their influence as they see whatever relevant to them wither and disappear until they are nothing but a footnote.
Maybe for a more high capacity state with a better handle on things, but it would be a bad idea for the Syrian government to publically declare such a thing. A huge part of the populace want Assad’s head and are already mad that the government isn’t acting more firmly against many former regime personnel. Many have been taking matters into their own hands with revenge killings being very common on the street. Publically saying that he gets life in prison will guaranteed cause riots and they don’t need to be stretched any more thinly. They have a fragile hold on power, relatively small professional forces who are very overstretched and huge numbers of trigger-happy militia everywhere. Outbreaks of violence that the disciplined forces can’t control spiraling out into massacres as militia rush in have been been disastrous not only for the bloody toll on the people but also for their integrity as a state and tanked external relations relative to what they could have been. So, they really don’t need to start optional riots that distract their forces and open them up to being hit with another provacation.
Going this way instead they rather have people celebrating in the streets for basically a few words while Assad himself is safely out of reach at his gamer pad in Moscow. BTW him abandoning the country to keep playing Candy Crush safe under Putin has not done much to endear him to those aligned with him who had stayed behind to face Syria’s hostility, hard to make a martyr image out of that.
I would probably also prefer to be executed by firing squad at age 60, than to spend 15-30 years rotting in prison.
That is to say, currently I think would prefer that, but I might feel differently when I’m 60 or if I were actually standing in front of a firing squad.
If they leave him alive Trump will send in a “special military operation” to free him and reinstate him
Hay America take fucking notes!
Well I guess it’s true what they say. You really can’t go home again.
Won’t this just make him want to comply even further with Putin? Now Putin has even more leverage again him. If Assad doesn’t do as he says, he could kick him out of Russia to face the death sentence.
The deal that Syria signed saved face for Russia by letting them maintain a foothold but in practice the most useful parts of the facilities are being transferred to Syria. Syria will take control of the civilian facilities at the Hmeimim airbase and the commercial section of the Tartus port. The military facilities are to be transformed into joint Russian-Syrian training centers.
edit: think I misread your post. Yeah Assad lives or dies by Putin’s word but that’s been the case for a while. I think his personal value in anything he can physically do is way outweighed by his symbolic value. His continued existence is a symbol that Putin will stand by his international partners, but he’s also the textbook example of a psycho incompetent dictator so taking him to justice also has great symbolic value for Syria especially. He’ll be gone if Syria offers up something more valuable to Russia than that symbol of friendship to their partners around the world but, since he hasn’t disappeared yet, I guess the Syrian government has been balking at the cost of that hypothetical deal.
What use could Russia have from hom? Politician is useless as soon as he’s barred from having influence or sayings in the matter.
An out of power politician could still share intelligence in general, but I’m not sure how useful that would be in this case with a separate government in power.
I don’t think it’s that so much as protecting him is useful to keep allies on your side and not worrying about being abandoned if their circumstances change
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