Former President Bashar al-Assad has been sentenced to death in official court in Damascus. The decision was made in absentia and is a landmark set in the history of the law following a terrible national war which has been exposed to the United Nations for years.

This is the first decision of its kind to be aired by media and regional state outlets such as Qatar News Agency in the country. The court in Damascus convicted the deposed leader in a trial for the Syrian civil war, finding him “legally responsible” for “serious crimes” against the citizens of his country.

In addition to the former President, the court had also handed down a death sentence against Atef Najib. Najib had held the position of head of the political security directorate in the province of Daraa in southern Syria, which is considered a hotspot of the first uprising that began in 2011.

The trial had emphasized abuses committed by state security organs over the last decade in a systematic manner. The two – al-Assad and Najib – were both found guilty of “crimes committed during the civil war”, which closely resemble the international human rights abuses that are actively being tracked by the International Criminal Court.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) and other local state media have reported on the ongoing transitional justice process in the country, where new courts have been set up to prosecute former members of the regime.

The UN Human Rights Office and other international rights organisations for years had chronicled arbitrary detentions and violence under al-Assad’s regime. In pronouncing this death sentence, the Damascus court has made it official that the top officials of the previous regime are legally responsible for those wartime crimes.