Syrian justice today condemned a military government force to 20 years in prison and two supporters of the government deposed to the death penalty and life imprisonment, respectively, in the first trial on the massacres of the Alawite minority in 2025.
© Haidar MUSTAFA / AFP via Getty Images
17/09/2026
by
Lusa
O trial of 14 people accused of involvement in massacres — who killed hundreds, including seven members of government forces and seven supporters of former President Bashar al-Assad — had begun in Aleppo in November 2025.
According to the France Presse Agency the court today pronounced the verdict on four people before further trials scheduled for September 24.
The militaryman sentenced to a 20-year sentence, a member of the Ministry of Defense forces, was found guilty of “the crime of murder in the first place,” declared the president of the Military Criminal Court, Judge Zakaria Bakkar.
Several of the accused, considered supporters of Assad, had declared themselves innocent at the opening of the trial; one of them claimed that he was in Lebanon during the wave of violence.
Among them, a man from the coastal region was sentenced to death by hanging — accused, among other crimes, of “aggression in order to provoke civil war and sectarian clashes” — another was sentenced to life imprisonment and a third was acquitted.
Violence, triggered – according to the authorities – by Assad’s supporters’ attacks against the government forces themselves, killed at least 1426, mostly civilians, according to a national commission of inquiry.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a non-governmental organisation based in London, United Kingdom, and with a vast network of informants in Syria, recorded about 1,700 deaths — most of the Alawites, the minority to which Bashar al-Assad belongs, deposed in December 2024.
The national commission of inquiry identified 298 suspects of being involved in the wave of violence, which killed 238 in the ranks of security forces and the Army.
The authorities then sent reinforcements to the region: some 200,000 fighters, according to the committee.
Syrian and international non-governmental organizations have reported massacres between various communities and ethnic groups in which entire families have died, perpetrated by government forces, armed groups allied with the government in office and armed volunteers.
Despite the assurances given by the Islamist authorities who took power at the end of 2024 — claiming that all communities would be protected — the Alawites and other Syrian minorities remain apprehensive.