People attend the trial at the Palace of Justice, as Syria began the trial of a first group drawn from hundreds of defendants allegedly involved in the mass killings of Alawites last March, in Aleppo, Syria, on November 18, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The first trial was opened on Tuesday of some of the hundreds of suspects linked to deadly clashes in Syria’s coastal provinces earlier this year that quickly spiralled into sectarian attacks.
State media reported that 14 people were brought to Aleppo’s Palace of Justice following a month-long, government-led investigation into the violence in March involving government forces and supporters of the ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad. The investigating committee referred 563 suspects to the judiciary.
Seven of the defendants in the court were Assad loyalists, while the other seven were members of the new government’s security forces. A judge was heard during the televised proceedings asking whether they were military or civilian.
The trial follows pressure from the public and the international community for the country’s new rulers to commit to judicial reform after decades under the autocratic rule of the Assad dynasty.
Despite initial reports by the state media that charges could quickly be brought against the defendants, the judge adjourned the session and rescheduled the next hearing for December.
Charges against the suspects could include sedition, inciting civil war, attacking security forces, murder, looting and leading armed gangs, according to state media.
Given the scale of the violence and the number of suspects, it is unclear how long the proceedings will take.
The clashes in March erupted after armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces. A counteroffensive then spiralled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs and who largely live along the coast.
The attacks on the Alawite community mounted pressure on interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Since coming to power in December, his government has scrambled to step out from diplomatic isolation and convince the US to drop crippling sanctions and boost trade to rebuild the war-torn country.
The government’s investigating committee in July concluded that over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed during several days of sectarian violence. But the inquiry said there was no evidence that Syria’s new military leaders had ordered attacks on the Alawite community.
A United Nations probe, however, found that violence targeting civilians by government-aligned factions had been “widespread and systematic.” The UN commission said that during the violence, homes in Alawite-majority areas were raided and civilians were asked “whether they were Sunni or Alawite.” It said: ”Alawite men and boys were then taken away to be executed.”
Published – November 18, 2025 05:48 pm IST
