A COUSIN of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was charged with murder, torture and responsibility for massacres today.

Atef Najib played a role in events which sparked the 13-year Syrian civil war as head of political security in Daraa, where the arrest and reported torture of 15 boys accused of painting anti-Assad graffiti on walls in March 2011 prompted protests which snowballed into a wider uprising.

Mr Najib was arrested in January 2025, a month after jihadist forces led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaida fighter who came to head the Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) alliance of Turkey-backed insurgent groups, swept the Assad government from power. Mr Assad himself is being tried in absentia, having sought refuge in Moscow.

The Sharaa government has begun legal proceedings to punish multiple former Syrian state officials. It has also voiced support for Israeli demands that Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, which fought for Mr Assad in the Syrian civil war, be disarmed.