On 25 September 2025, the Syrian Ministry of Justice announced the issuance of an arrest warrant in absentia for the country’s former President Bashar Hafez al-Assad. The document was signed by the investigating judge of the seventh division of Damascus.
The order states that the 60-year-old Assad is being prosecuted because of a number of serious crimes, including: intentional murder of two or more persons, incitement to civil war, and torture leading to death. The warrant is based on articles 535, 533, 534 and 298 of the Syrian Penal Code, as well as the 2022 law prohibiting torture.
The document provides a description of Assad’s appearance: height of about 189 cm, blue eyes, high forehead, long nose, narrow lips, light brown hair and an oval face.
The warrant obliges law enforcement agencies to apprehend Bashar al-Assad wherever he is and take him to a place of detention. The case is listed as File No. 1, relating to events in Deraa in 2011, the region where the Syrian revolution began.
The move comes nine months after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 and the victory of the Syrian revolution, with opposition forces in control of the government. Assad himself travelled to Russia, where he was granted asylum.
During the years of war (2011-2024) he was accused of mass crimes: bombing of cities, use of chemical weapons, torture and mass executions. International human rights organisations have repeatedly claimed his personal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Syrian ruling coincided in time with trials in Europe. In August 2025, a French court issued arrest warrants for seven high-ranking officials of the former Syrian regime, among them Bashar al-Assad, in the case of the 2012 shelling of a press centre in Homs that led to the deaths of American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Auchlik.
Human rights organisations, notably the International Federation for Human Rights and the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, saw these actions as a “prerequisite for a future trial” of the Syrian regime.
Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow in December 2024, where he was granted asylum. His opponents came to power in Syria, with Islamist rebels playing a key role in the overthrow. The closest relatives and cronies of Assad, whom the new authorities accuse of numerous crimes, fled the country.
On 25 September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine and Syria had signed a joint communiqué on the restoration of diplomatic relations.