Former Syrian President Assad sentenced to death in absentia

0:04Hello, welcome to the programme. This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. My name's Paul Henley and we're coming to you live from London. First up on the programme today, a court in Syria has sentenced the country's ousted president, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother, Maher, to death. They're both living in Russia, beyond the reach of Syrian law. But an infamous former senior security official and cousin of the president, Atef Najib, who was present in court, also received a death sentence following a trial that's lasted six months. Najib was in charge of political security in Syria's Dera province, where the uprising began in March 2011.

0:46He was detained last year, and he was convicted of crimes including the intentional killing of children and torture leading to death. The verdicts have drawn widespread support on social media across Syria and have prompted some public celebrations in the country. The transitional authorities are trying figures from the former government both in person and in absentia. These people from the Dara province welcome the sentencing today. Atef Najib arrested me when I was 15 years old. Thank God the Syrian revolution prevailed after 15 years. Thank God that today Atef Najib was sentenced to death. The joy is beyond words.

1:31First there were the boys of Dara and the girls of Dara. Then came the war and the injuries. Now I say congratulations to the Syrian people and congratulations to every mother of a martyr who gave her son for this nation. Some members of the Syrian public today. Leen al-Sadi, who is a producer with the BBC's Arabic service, is in Damascus covering the court case. She's been telling me about the atmosphere outside the Palace of Justice. Large crowds of victims' families gathered outside the court holding pictures of their missing or killed loved ones. People started also massive celebrations, cheering, clapping, crying, and waving flags.

2:14Kars also joined the celebration in joy around the Justice Palace. And also similar and bigger celebration broke out in the city of Daraa at the famous Al-Omari Square, where most of the demonstrations started in 2011. Just describe the scene in court. I know you weren't inside, but what have people told you about how the court resolution went today? So what happened in the court today is that the court sentenced the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his top officials to death. They were found guilty of mass murder, torture and crimes against humanity. The court also ordered an international hunt to arrest al-Assad and his brother.

3:04Tell us a bit more about those who were accused. Yes, as I said, it's Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian president who's now in Russia, and his brother Mahir al-Assad, the former military commander, and also Atif Najib, he's Bashar's cousin, a former security chief in Daraa. and he's the only top official present today in the courtroom. There's also other eight high-ranking officers who fled the country with al-Assad in December 2024. What did the former president's cousin, who was in court, have to say, if anything? How did he react to the sentencing? Actually, Atif Najib stood today inside the courtroom in cage under a heavy guard.

3:52but before he denied all charges and claimed he was innocent. He has also argued that he left his boss in March 2011 and had no power later. But the judge said that Atif Najib showed no regret before sentencing him to death today. There are other ongoing court cases against members of the former regime, aren't there? Yes, the new Syrian courts are continuing to investigate and betray many other officials. There is another cousin who's called Wassim al-Assad, is currently on trial for murder and drug trafficking and with his verdict expected soon. There is also the former mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun.

4:45The BBC's Lean al-Sadi in Damascus. There are many thousands of victims of the president's former regime. Many of them are still missing. We'll hear now from just one family. This is taken from an interview on NewsHour in June. Nailah al-Abbassi is a doctor now in Riyadh and the sister of Rania al-Abbassi. For 13 years, her family had been looking for evidence of what happened to her sister, who was a chess champion, along with her sister's six daughters and sons. In June, Syria's Missing Persons Commission concluded they were all dead. They'd been killed by the regime. They presented video evidence they'd obtained to the family, and Naila told us what she'd seen.

5:27I should mention that what she says is quite distressing to listen to. It's very difficult. The video was devastating, really. It felt like a lightning strike. It showed our children lying on the ground. Ahmed and Timo and Antisar and Ala and Leon. The six children, five girls, one boy. They are very clear in their clothes. we can recognize them by the very same clothes they were wearing in the last photographs taken before their arrest there is a plastic black plastic cable tie around their necks maybe they had been strangled other Jima and Najah I can see also visible fresh blood on their faces The six was lying on the floor.

6:30And watching this video, Yanni, it's really, really one of the most painful moments in my life. For more than 13 years, we had held a hope that we would be reunited with them. We never stopped searching or praying for answers. Then suddenly we were confronted with this reality. What made it even more shocking, Yanni, it happened the same day they were arrested on March 11, 2013. We have 13 years working, searching for them, and they have been killed in the first two hours. We are convinced and we are confident that Bashar al-Assad, he is the one. He gives the orders to every officer under him to kill even children, even women, even innocent people.

7:17He is the one, the biggest criminal. We are confirmed of that, but we will not stop. We will not stop. We will follow. We will continue struggling to bring him to the court. Naila Alabasi speaking to the BBC in June. We can hear live now, or rather we can hear from Reem Alaaf, who is a Syrian-born writer and a former fellow at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank in London. She's also a board member of the Syrian civil society organisation called The Day After. And she's written a book called It Started in Damascus, How the Long Syrian Revolution Reshaped Our World. I asked her if these death sentences had been the right outcome.

7:59I am in the minority to say that I do not believe this is the way this should have been handled. The trial of Atif Najib, which you have explained so well with the witnesses and your journalists, on the ground was necessary. But we had an accused and we had a description of the crimes. We had witnesses, we had victims speak out, and there was the potential for closure for some of his victims, as we saw after with the celebrations when the verdict was read. In the case of Bashar and Mahir, his brother, I think that this was a rushed announcement. This was mere symbolic, justice. And I believe that the new government is really, you know, struggling with how to deal with the Assad crimes and the legacy that they would leave.

8:53I think that this will not bring closure when the entire Syrian population has not listened to the crimes, has not seen the evidence, even though most people know various parts of the massive crimes committed all these years. But really, because of the magnitude of the war on the Syrian population for all these years, I think it is necessary to have a proper special tribunal, like the ones we've seen in The Hague for several nations coming out of conflict. And this was not achieved in Syria. And there's a lot of people who tend to agree with me that there's selective justice being applied. So this is a huge symbol.

9:37Everybody can celebrate even hearing the verdict coming from Damascus, you know, former president sentenced to death. But in reality, it does very little to bring us to trust the judiciary, to understand how we move forward and to go through this process of accountability that I think all Syrians will agree is needed. And of course, a court in The Hague would not have handed down death sentences. Is that key? Is it the sentences you object to partly? Well, I am personally opposed to the death penalty. I believe the majority of Syrians are not and believe that in some cases, only a death penalty, a death sentence could, you know, wipe the slate clean and, you know, allow people to turn a new page.

10:25This is not my biggest worry. Let's face it. Assad is in Russia, a country that has the death penalty. Other places he could be in another Arab country or, for example, in Iran, also have the death penalty. So I don't think this is really the issue. I do believe that we, you know, we all think that when Putin wants to give him back, he will. But the death penalty per se is not the issue in a country that has seen so much tragedy. I do believe that most Syrians and myself, you know, I'm not going to be upset if I see Bashar Assad face this sentence. But I think it is the fact that this was done so quickly on the fly.

11:06And it was announced with the Hatif Najib and the lower rank officials. And we cannot treat Bashar Assad like we treat all the other criminals. Okay, we've touched on some of the terrible, sorry to interrupt, the terrible atrocities committed by Hatif Najib. Are you surprised that he didn't get out of Syria when Assad fled? Well, we know by now that Assad fled really with taking only, you know, the money and the people he wanted to take with him. We still don't have the full story of that. So I am not surprised because he abandoned even, you know, many of his closest associates. So Atif Najib is one of many who simply did not manage to flee with the rest of the higher ranking officials.

11:52And he had been demoted after the beginning of the revolution. So I'm not surprised, but I do think that we can expect to see a lot more of the lower level, such as Wasim Asad mentioned now by your correspondent in Damascus. these are people who are not as high up on the echelon, but who also were part and parcel of the corruption and of the killing machine of the Assad regime. And very, very briefly, we only have a few seconds left, but under no circumstances do you see Assad being coming back from Russia? Not at the moment, precisely, especially because Putin does not like to lose. And if he does bring him back, that means he has accepted that he did not manage to protect his associates.

12:36And he always takes pride in protecting the people who work for him, no matter how criminal. Syrian-born writer there, Reem Alaf. You are listening to the BBC World Service live from London. This is NewsHour.

13:00Coming up, why have elephants suddenly started turning up at Zambia's most famous tourist spot? There's an elephant? Oh wow. It's gone? Recent severe droughts have forced animals to seek food in unusual places, but experts say another key driver is increased development around the town and around the Victoria Falls, which has cut across the traditional routes used by elephants as they migrate between neighbouring Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia. The headlines, Colombian officials now say more than 200 people have been killed by an earthquake that hit the west of the country on Monday, and Venezuela and Israel have agreed to re-establish consular ties in a dramatic shift in stance by Caracas after a long diplomatic rift.

14:00I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. President Trump left last month's NATO summit in Turkey on a secret military flight, according to new reports in the Washington Post. Journalists and some of his staff thought the president was on board Air Force One, but he'd apparently secretly switched aircraft before takeoff after US intelligence flagged a credible threat linked to Iran. Mr Trump is said to have been transported from one plane to another in a catering truck. I've been speaking to Paul Ekloff, who's a former US Secret Service agent. I asked him what he'd made of what had been reported.

14:37I was impressed by the tradecraft of my former colleagues in the United States Secret Service, But I had a different take on the entire event than I think the average person. There's a larger security question I think that we're all missing. Everyone is fascinated by the airplane, the catering truck and, you know, the alleged deception, which I can neither confirm nor deny that it occurred. I'm more interested in who benefits from revealing how the presidential protection division responds to a credible threat. Every disclosed detail potentially helps an adversary understand our capabilities, contingencies and decision making.

15:12So this kind of thing might happen often. The important thing is keeping it secret. Is that your view? I would say it does not happen often, but it is an option that the Secret Service and others in executive protection always have. There are two limousines in the motorcade. You don't know which one he's in or if he's even in one of those. When the president travels to war zones, there are frequently tactics and techniques that are used to create doubt in an adversary of which aircraft or which movement that he's going to make. What concerns me is the second threat. If sensitive operational information and materials were disclosed by someone with privileged access, that vulnerability didn't end when the president left Turkey.

15:53Well, it was disclosed a month after the event. That's different. It's not putting him in immediate danger, is it? I wholeheartedly disagree. It doesn't put him in danger on the ground in Ankara, Turkey. The Iranian threat may have ended a month ago when the president left Turkey, But the threat posed by someone willing to disclose how we protected him may have traveled home with him. What do you think of the fact that the aeroplane was identified as a possible target for attack? The president left it, but the press corps flew on it as a sort of decoy, presumably. Well, this isn't unprecedented either.

16:27And threats to Air Force One have been persisted. They even changed the call sign many years ago after Air Force One, when intelligence revealed that adversaries knew the call sign for Air Force One. And I understand the question, but you have to be careful with the premise. If the reporting is accurate, those journalists weren't left sitting in an unprotected airplane somewhere. They were aboard Air Force One, one of the most sophisticated and protected aircraft in the world. Which was seen at the time as enough of a target for the president to have to be removed from it. The Washington Post, which reported this story, is today saying that this security thing crossed a line.

17:03It was putting journalists in danger. They were left on a potentially more secure aircraft. Could separating the president from the aircraft have changed the threat calculus? I mean, of course. But the Secret Service's responsibility in that moment is to protect the president of the United States and preserve continuity of government. I don't believe it was that the press was put in more danger at all. Should questions be asked, security questions, about the Qatari gifted aircraft that the president allegedly transferred to in Britain and went back to the States on? I think there are legitimate questions to be asked, but the 747s that currently act as Air Force One were retrofitted by Boeing and the United States military and the Air Force to carry the president of the United States.

17:48That was Paul Ekloff, who is a former US Secret Service agent.

17:56The authorities in China are warning of a rise in marriage fraud as scammers target single men desperate to find a wife. The BBC has been to the heart of the so-called flash marriage industry, where matchmaking agencies arrange weddings in a matter of days. The industry sprung up due to the country's stark male-to-female gender imbalance and vulnerable bachelors are willing to spend thousands of pounds to find a wife. As our China correspondent Laura Bicker reports, this scam is a symptom of a wider demographic crisis facing the country. This music signifies the start of what appears to be a love story.

18:38Alongside the romantic soundtrack, 37-year-old Wang Zhuang is pictured smiling and holding hands with his fiancée after handing over most of his life savings to a matchmaking agency. How many women did you meet before you chose your bride? I met seven. This was the ace. I chose her. Each meeting lasts about eight to ten minutes. You see one person around four to five times. How long after that meeting were you married? About three or four days. That's why they call this a flash marriage, a booming industry in China. During their wedding ceremony, the pair pledged to build a new life. He also handed her thousands of pounds as a bride price, a traditional Chinese marriage custom.

19:34It wasn't long before he realised even her age was fake. He discovered she'd been married three times, had three kids and was deeply in debt.

19:48When this happens, you feel extremely anxious. I've spent my life's savings. If I include the cost for the wedding, the total damage is close to 74 ,000 US dollars. My whole family is turned upside down. My parents blame me. I cannot work. I cannot sleep.

20:13He went back to confront the matchmaking firm, only to find the building empty. They too had disappeared with his money.

20:26Hello. My name is Laura and I'm a journalist from the UK. We toured a warren of offices trying to find an agency to talk to us. One eventually agreed. Of course, gay marriages affect us. We have an old saying. One speck of dirt ruins a whole part of soup. We often attend meetings by the local police. If any company commits fraud, it will show the legal responsibilities. So after our matchmaker interview, one of his colleagues was not pleased and we had to leave quite quickly. Although he says he is a legitimate business owner, that he's there to try to match as many people as possible and to ensure that his clients have some kind of background check.

21:21This is an industry where it's difficult to know, especially after just a few days, who you're marrying. The agencies springing up in Guizhou are a symptom of a much bigger problem. We've come to the countryside to get an idea of the scale of the problem. China is facing a demographic crisis. crisis. Up until 10 years ago, parents were only allowed to have one child and there was a preference for boys. That has left around 30 million men looking for a wife in this country. That's the equivalent of the entire male population of the UK remaining a bachelor. And that is becoming an issue. The party is trying to get more people to get married, trying to get more people to have children, but it's having a limited effect.

22:13Women in China can also afford to be choosy and demand a higher bride price. In China, the family line runs through the men of the household. It's seen as a family duty to get married and have children. Fewer marriages mean fewer children at a time when China's population is shrinking. It's a shift that's reshaping society and creating a challenge the Communist Party is struggling to overcome. Laura Bicker reporting from China. This is the BBC World Service and NewsHour.

23:01Welcome back to NewsHour. Now, across much of the developed world, as hybrid working leaves more officers underused, many cities are rethinking the future of those buildings. Could converting offices in places such as London and Washington DC into homes help tackle housing shortages and revive business districts? John Lawrenson has been searching for answers starting out in Paris. I'm standing in the middle of Europe's biggest business district, La Défense, just west of Paris. It's a forest of skyscrapers. There are over 60 in all on a huge slab of concrete. There are loads of big companies headquartered here, Total Energy, for example, and the Société Générale Bank.

23:50But now it has a problem. I'm here with Pierre-Yves Guisse, the head of Paris La Défense, the public company that runs this business district. The vacancy rate is around 14-15 % at the moment, which is the direct consequence of the changes in corporate real estate strategies that have been taking place since COVID. Around 400 ,000 square metres of existing offices might have to be transformed in the next 5-10 years into mostly housing, but also higher education facilities or entertainment facilities, shops, restaurants. So here you are in the office and there are desks and screens. Tomorrow you are in an apartment.

24:32Roland Cubin, deputy CEO of the Groupama real estate management company, shows me around La Tour Diamant, the diamond tower, which has office space for 1 ,800 workers. One of the challenges when you're converting office blocks into flats is the width of the buildings. Generally, they're much wider than residential ones, so you have a lot of windowless space in the middle that it's difficult to know what to do with. There won't be any rooms there. No, it's only the access. For office conversions at scale, the best examples are in the United States, in New York and also Washington DC, whose deputy mayor for planning and economic development is Nina Albert.

25:13So DC overall has about 20 % vacancy in our office market. Commercial tenants are re-upping their leases, but they're taking less space because they're integrating into their space plans telework. So there continues to be a lessened demand for office space, even though you have the same number of tenants. But D.C. has been able to keep that total office vacancy number flat as opposed to having it grow because we've been converting. So we set a goal of introducing 15 ,000 new residents downtown by 2028. All those empty offices represent a colossal amount of money. Converting those offices into something you can rent or sell is a solution for owners seeking to maintain the value of their property, quite possibly the only solution.

26:05John Lawrenson reporting there. You can hear more at bbc.com or by searching for BBC Business Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

26:31You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC. My name's Paul Henley. Rescuers in Colombia are continuing to search for survivors of an earthquake that's killed at least 224 people. Those are the latest figures. The western cities of Cali and Pereira were among the places worst hit by yesterday's quake, multi-storey buildings reduced to rubble. Colombia's new president has declared a state of emergency. Several foreign countries have offered to send rescue teams. Earlier, NewsHour's Rebecca Kesby spoke to José Camilo Cordoba from the NGO Progresa Chocó, working to tackle poverty in the region of the same name.

27:10He's in Qibdo, the capital of Choco, which is about four hours away from the epicentre of the earthquake by car. He described the moment the quake hit. I was at home. I had just come back upstairs after walking my dog when I started feeling the movement. At first, I was trying to understand what was happening, but at the second pass, the shaking became stronger and stronger. That was when I decided to go downstairs and get out onto the streets. I lived right next to the fire station. And in a way, having the firefighters there helped come and some of the neighbors. But immediately after the earthquake, you could really feel the fear and desperation spreading across the city.