DAMASCUS: Bashar Assad’s 24-year rule of Syria ended abruptly in December 2024 following a lightning advance by rebel forces who struck while the Russian and Iranian allies who had backed him through years of civil war were distracted by conflicts elsewhere.
He fled to Moscow, ending more than five decades of iron-fisted rule by his family and opening a new chapter for Syria. The historic shift was underscored on Tuesday when a Damascus court sentenced him to death in his absence for crimes including killings, arbitrary arrests and torture during the years in which he clung to power.
Assad became president in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez.
Shaped in its early years by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was defined by the civil war, which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.
Assad turned the full power of the Syrian military against his opponents as he sought to crush the rebellion inspired by the Arab Spring movement that had toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.
