Atif Najib Denies Charges as Damascus Court Tries Daraa Children Torture Case

Atif Najib, the former head of Political Security in Daraa and a cousin of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, denied all charges against him during the second session of his trial in Damascus, which the Syrian Observer said had become an early test of Syria’s emerging transitional justice process.

“That short sentence in the courtroom was enough to ignite broad controversy after it was uttered by Atef Najib, the former head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa, during his second interrogation into the Omari Mosque case, reopening one of the most sensitive files at the early stage of the Syrian protests in 2011”

Al-Jazeera Net

The May 10 hearing before the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus included testimony from claimants and witnesses and Najib’s interrogation, with charges presented by Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan covering suppressing peaceful protests in Daraa and subjecting detainees, including minors, to physical torture.

Al-Jazeera Net

The Syrian judiciary charged Najib with murder, torture, and arbitrary detention in a case tied to the first anti-government demonstrations in 2011 in Daraa governorate, and the indictment said the acts “amount to war crimes” and crimes against humanity.

In the courtroom video released by the Syrian Ministry of Justice, Najib attempted to shift responsibility to other security agencies, claiming the arrests were carried out by Military Security and that the children were later transferred to the Palestine Branch.

The court also confirmed the absence of several fugitive defendants, foremost among them Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, and moved forward with procedures to try them in absentia while ordering steps to strip them of civil rights and place their assets under state administration.

Najib’s denials drew direct courtroom framing from Judge Fakhreddin al-Arian, who told him that “You were the top commander in Daraa, and you are personally responsible for issuing orders to kill, arrest, and torture...”.

In his own testimony, Najib rejected the accusations that his branch arrested and tortured the schoolchildren whose anti-Assad graffiti helped spark protests, and he said the arrests were carried out by Military Security and that the children were later transferred to the Palestine Branch.

Lebanon Debate

The Syrian Observer reported that Najib denied that Political Security forces under his command opened fire on demonstrators, instead accusing Military Security, State Security, and Air Force Intelligence of confronting protesters with live ammunition.

Lebanon Debate described Najib’s courtroom stance as denying any connection to the arrest of the children of Daraa and said he deemed what had circulated about the case “mere Facebook news,” while a video published by the Syrian Ministry of Justice showed him saying he learned of the matter “from the media.”

Al-Jazeera Net added that Najib denied the charges related to the arrest and torture of children and said that what is circulating about that is baseless rumors, including his response to the judge’s question about his knowledge: “Your Honor, I have no knowledge, my family in Daraa is misled; this is a rumor that spread to other security matters”.

The trial’s significance, the Syrian Observer said, extended beyond Najib’s denials into a broader legal and human-rights debate over whether Syria’s judiciary is prepared to handle cases stemming from the Assad era.

Legal experts cited by Enab Baladi warned that some charges may suffer from serious flaws, particularly the use of the term “war crimes” for events in the earliest days of the 2011 protests, and Mansour al-Omari said the legal problems surfaced during the second hearing stem largely from rushing the trial before adopting a transitional justice law.

Omari argued that war crimes cannot be charged for acts committed in Syria before April 2012 because the country had not yet been legally classified as being in a non-international armed conflict, and he said labeling the early Daraa repression as “war crimes” could reinforce the former regime’s narrative that Syria was already in a state of war.

The Syrian Observer also reported that the judge ordered media representatives to leave after questions and pleadings touched on confidential documents, protected witnesses, and sensitive information, while the session remained public for those physically present.

In parallel, the trial was described as part of a justice and accountability pathway, with the Fourth Criminal Court session in Damascus expected to continue questioning Najib and hearing witness testimony under the Witness Protection Law.