Overview
- Najib, the former security chief in Deraa, heard more than 10 charges including murder, torture, and responsibility for massacres during Sunday’s session in the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus.
- Prosecutors said his forces detained schoolchildren over anti-government graffiti and tortured them with electric shocks, fingernail removal, and severe beatings.
- The court cited allegations that security units fired live rounds at peaceful sit-ins at a Deraa mosque and blocked ambulances from reaching the wounded.
- Seventy-five plaintiffs have filed complaints, and judges moved parts of the hearing into closed session to protect witnesses.
- Bashar and Maher al-Assad will be tried in absentia after Bashar fled to Russia in December 2024, and authorities say recent arrests of Adnan Abboud Halawa and Amjad Yousef show the prosecutions are widening.