Syria sentences former grand mufti Hassoun to life for regime crimes

Ahmad Hassoun sat in a Damascus courtroom on Monday as a judge read the words that would define the rest of his life: guilty on multiple counts, sentenced to life in prison. The 77-year-old cleric, who spent sixteen years as Syria's grand mufti—the highest Islamic authority in the land—had been convicted of inciting sectarian violence and justifying murder. More specifically, he had used his position to defend the regime's use of barrel bombs, those crude, devastating weapons that rained down on civilian neighborhoods and killed indiscriminately.

Hassoun was not some minor functionary. He had been a visible, trusted figure in Bashar Assad's inner circle, often photographed at the president's side during religious ceremonies. Born in Aleppo, he had risen through Syria's religious establishment and held his post from 2005 until 2021, when the position was abolished. He was arrested in March 2025 at Damascus Airport while attempting to flee the country—a detail that speaks to what he understood about his own culpability once the regime began to crumble.

Judge Fakhreddine al-Aryan was explicit about what Hassoun had done. The official religious establishment under Assad, the judge said, had "justified the use of barrel bombs that targeted civilian areas and caused widespread destruction, which constitutes a violation of the rules of international humanitarian law." This was not abstract legal language. It was a description of a man who had used his moral authority to sanctify weapons designed to terrorize.

Hassoun's conviction is part of a larger reckoning now unfolding in Syria. He is the tenth Assad-era official to be sentenced since the regime's collapse in December 2024. Earlier this month, Assad himself and his brother Maher were sentenced to death in absentia—they are believed to be in Russia, beyond the reach of Syrian courts. Two of Assad's cousins, Atif Najib and Wassim al-Assad, were tried in person and also received death sentences. The machinery of accountability is grinding forward, and it is moving fast.

The civil war that ended with Assad's ouster had lasted thirteen years, beginning in 2011 with a government crackdown on anti-government protesters. By the time it ended, more than half a million people were dead. Millions more had been displaced from their homes, scattered across the region and the world. The war was not some distant historical event—it is recent enough that many Syrians remember exactly where they were when it began, and where they were when it ended.

Many Syrians have welcomed these trials. They had grown impatient with the new government's pace, wanting faster action against the officials who had orchestrated or enabled the regime's crimes. But human rights organizations have raised a different concern. Balkees Jarrah, the Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch, warned that "advancing justice for the litany of serious crimes committed in Syria requires more than just convictions, but building a system that can deliver competent, impartial, and independent justice." The worry is that in the rush to prosecute, the trials themselves may become instruments of something other than justice—that speed and fairness are not always compatible.

What happens next is unclear. Syria's new authorities face a choice between the satisfaction of rapid convictions and the harder work of building institutions that can sustain legitimate justice over time. Hassoun's life sentence is one data point in that unfolding story. Whether it represents the beginning of genuine accountability or merely the appearance of it remains to be seen.