On Sunday, the first trial session was held in absentia for the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, with a number of figures of the former regime, most notably former security official Atef Najib, who appeared in person before the court. A judicial source told Agence France-Presse, who declined to reveal his name, that “the first session of the transitional justice sessions begins the process of preparing for the trial in absentia of the criminal Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, in addition to the trial in the presence of a number of security and military officials, the first of whom is the criminal Atef Najib,” who was arrested in January 2025. Najib came handcuffed to the courtroom in Damascus, according to what an Agence France-Presse correspondent witnessed. He is a relative of the ousted President Bashar al-Assad. He previously headed the Political Security Branch in Daraa (south), where the spark of popular protests broke out in 2011, and he is considered responsible for a campaign of repression and widespread arrests in the governorate. Criminal Court Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Erian began the session by saying, “Today we begin the first transitional justice trials in Syria... which includes an arrested accused, who is in the dock, and includes defendants fleeing from justice,” before successively reciting the names of other symbols from the previous era of rule, led by the ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, who will be tried “in absentia.” Al-Assad fled to Russia the day after the opposition factions led by Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham arrived in Damascus in December 2024, ending more than five decades of his family's rule of Syria, including 24 years he spent in power, succeeding his father, Hafez Al-Assad. The judge did not question the accused, Atef Naguib, during this session, declaring that it was dedicated to “administrative and legal procedures for preparation,” and announced a second trial session on May 10. The judicial source confirmed that the in-person trials will include Wassim al-Assad, a relative of the ousted president, former Mufti Badr al-Din Hassoun, and other military and security officials who were successively arrested by the new authorities over the past months and who will be tried on charges of committing atrocities against Syrians. According to the Syrian Code of Criminal Procedure, the trial in absentia allows the Criminal Court to proceed with the procedures for prosecuting accused persons who are not arrested or fugitive, after notifying them and giving them due notice. If they do not appear, the court can consider the charges against them and personal compensation claims, and issue a judgment in absentia at the end of the process. The fate of tens of thousands of missing and detainees in Syria, and the mass graves in which the previous regime is believed to have buried detainees who died under torture, constitute one of the most prominent aspects of the Syrian tragedy after a conflict that caused the death of more than half a million people. Anti-Assad protests broke out in Daraa, southern Syria, on March 15, 2011, after children who wrote slogans against the then Syrian president on the walls of their school were arrested and tortured by security forces. Following the outbreak of protests, Atef Najib, who was held responsible for the crackdown in Daraa, was removed from his position. In April 2011, the United States included him on a sanctions list on the grounds of “human rights violations.”