Syria's Former Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun Sentenced to Life for War Crimes Skip to main content

Syria's Former Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun Sentenced to Life for War Crimes

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By Tanha Sagar | Published on

Syria's Fourth Criminal Court convicted Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun of war crimes and crimes against humanity, extending the country's transitional-justice process into its former religious establishment for the first time.

DAMASCUS — Syria's Fourth Criminal Court sentenced Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, the country's former grand mufti under Bashar al-Assad, to life in prison on August 24, 2026. The Damascus court delivered the ruling during the sixth session of Hassoun's trial. Judges convicted the former religious official of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role during Syria's civil war.

The panel found that Hassoun's office had provided religious justification for military operations. It found that he financed an armed faction linked to abuses against civilians, and that he accepted money and gifts to help free people detained by the former government's security agencies. The verdict extends Syria's transitional-justice process beyond the security and military officials who dominated earlier cases, reaching into the country's religious establishment for the first time.


What the Damascus Court Found

Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan presided over the panel, joined by judges Abdul Hamid al-Hamoud and Hossam Abdul Rahman. Judge Omar al-Radi represented the public prosecution. Members of Syria's National Commission for Transitional Justice attended the proceedings, along with representatives from international legal and humanitarian organizations, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). The trial opened June 25 with an indictment accusing Hassoun of exploiting his position to build extensive, unofficial ties with al-Assad, security and military officials, and leaders of sectarian militias.

Judge al-Aryan placed the case in the context of Syria's 2011 uprising. He said security and military forces met peaceful demonstrations that year with live ammunition. Civilians subsequently faced killings, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement and enforced disappearance, the judge said. SANA reported that the court examined Hassoun's conduct against this backdrop rather than treating his public statements in isolation.

Judges found that the religious establishment Hassoun led had provided religious cover for military and security operations. That cover extended to the use of barrel bombs against populated civilian areas, conduct the judge described as a violation of international humanitarian law. Beyond his public statements, the panel found that Hassoun regularly financed the leadership of Liwa al-Quds, an armed formation linked to serious violations against civilians. Judges said this support went beyond charity and materially strengthened the group's military activity.

The panel separately found that Hassoun accepted money and gifts in exchange for intervening to help secure the release of civilians held by the former government's security agencies. Judges characterized these actions, taken together, as aiding, abetting and providing moral support that made an effective contribution to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Charges and Sentence

Judges convicted Hassoun on multiple counts and merged the custodial terms into a single sentence. His convictions included:

●       Inciting civil war and sectarian strife: life imprisonment

●       Incitement to intentional killing: 20 years

●       Principal participation in intentional killing: 10 years

●       Abuse of office: three years

●       Provoking sectarian and racial tension: six months

The panel merged these terms and ordered enforcement of the most severe penalty, life imprisonment. Beyond the prison sentence, the court imposed several additional measures:

●       A fine of 1,000 Syrian pounds

●       A separate fine equal to three times the money Hassoun received for abuse of office, which SANA reported as $195,000

●       Loss of Hassoun's civil rights

●       Confiscation of his assets for the public treasury, once civil obligations are met

●       Compensation for plaintiffs whose claims were accepted, with other victims' families retaining the right to pursue separate claims

●       Continued witness-protection measures shielding the identities of protected witnesses

●       A bar on amnesty, conditional release or a suspended sentence, given the gravity of the offenses

Prosecutors retained the right to pursue other officials or accomplices in the case if further evidence emerges.

Why the Verdict Matters

Hassoun's conviction differs from earlier Assad-era cases. Most previous defendants were senior security or military officials, and several were Assad's own relatives. Hassoun instead built his career as a cleric. Prosecutors argued that his religious authority, not a weapon or a command post, made him a participant in wartime abuses.

The case tests whether Syria's judiciary will treat ideological and institutional support for atrocities as criminally significant, not only direct violence. It also marks the first time the country's young transitional-justice process has reached into the religious establishment, a body that operated closely alongside the security state under Assad's government.

The Legal Basis of the Trial

Hassoun's trial, like other Assad-era cases before the Fourth Criminal Court, proceeds without a dedicated transitional-justice law. Syria's parliament has not yet convened to pass one, and the domestic penal code does not explicitly codify war crimes or crimes against humanity as distinct offenses. In earlier proceedings before the same court, Judge al-Aryan grounded these prosecutions in Syria's Constitutional Declaration, the country's interim charter. He cited a provision recognizing rights under international treaties Syria has ratified, and another excluding war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the former government from statutory time limits, according to reporting by Syria Direct.

Judges have also applied the Geneva Conventions and other international instruments as an interpretive framework alongside Syrian law. Syria has signed many relevant treaties but has not incorporated them into domestic law. The country is also not a party to the Rome Statute, which defines crimes against humanity under international law.

Questions Over Transitional Justice

That legal gap has drawn criticism from some human-rights lawyers and researchers. Hiba Zayadin, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher, has said she considers the trials premature without a settled legal framework establishing who is tried, when and on what basis. Joumana Seif, a human-rights lawyer who resigned from Syria's National Commission for Transitional Justice, told Syria Direct that trials should have waited for parliament to pass a transitional-justice law. Seif pointed to what she called errors in how some charges, including war-crimes counts, have been legally characterized.

Both researchers have also questioned the selectivity of the process. They noted that prosecutions so far have focused only on former Assad-government figures, while allegations of serious abuses by other armed factions active during and after the war remain largely unaddressed. That selectivity, they argue, could shape how Syrians ultimately judge the process's fairness.

Hassoun's Defense and the Evidence

Hassoun contested the case from the outset. At the trial's opening session on June 25, he denied the charges. He testified that he had stayed in Syria to help protect people who remained, that video clips used against him had been taken out of context, and that he did not consider himself a supporter of the former government, according to a monitoring report by the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), an independent group that tracked the proceedings session by session.

At the third hearing on July 23, after prosecutors submitted video evidence, Hassoun's defense counsel filed a written brief with a flash drive. The defense formally requested a technical examination of the footage to verify it had not been altered, and the court accepted the request, SJAC and SANA both reported. Syria's National Commission for Transitional Justice later said its own review concluded that editing or excerpting the videos would not affect their evidentiary value, in part because Hassoun had acknowledged them, according to the Syrian outlet Enab Baladi.

The fourth session, held July 30, included testimony from an anonymous witness. The witness told the court that Hassoun had demanded roughly $65,000 in exchange for helping secure the release of the witness's detained sister. That allegation is consistent with the $195,000 abuse-of-office fine the court ultimately imposed, equal to three times that sum, though the article treats the testimony itself as an allegation the court weighed rather than an independently confirmed fact.

Who Was Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun?

Hassoun, 77, was born in Aleppo in 1949. He came from a family with a tradition of religious scholarship and studied at Cairo's Al-Azhar University. He served in Syria's parliament from 1990 to 1998. Assad appointed him grand mufti in 2005, a position in which he was initially known for promoting interfaith dialogue.

That public image shifted after Syria's 2011 uprising began. Hassoun aligned himself closely with the government. He blamed foreign interference for the unrest and described the opposition in terms the government used to characterize it as terrorism. His son was killed later that year. His outspoken defense of the government's military campaigns, including its use of barrel bombs, earned him the nickname "barrel-bomb mufti" among critics.

Assad abolished the office of grand mufti in November 2021. Hassoun went into hiding after the government's collapse in December 2024. He was arrested at Damascus airport in March 2025, roughly a month after he had emerged from hiding, according to Al Jazeera's reporting.

The Wider Assad-Era Accountability Process

Hassoun's conviction is the latest in a series of prosecutions Syria's transitional authorities have pursued since Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia as his government collapsed. Atef Najib, Assad's cousin and the former head of political security in Daraa province, became the first former Assad-era official reported to face trial, when preliminary proceedings opened in April 2026. He appeared in court in person and denied the charges against him. On August 11, the Fourth Criminal Court convicted Najib in person and sentenced him to death. The same ruling issued death sentences in absentia against Assad, his brother Maher and five other officials who remain outside Syria, for murder, torture, unlawful detention, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On August 18, the court sentenced another Assad cousin, Wasim al-Assad, to death and ordered his assets confiscated. Judges convicted him of crimes against humanity and war crimes in a case that also involved drug-trafficking allegations. Assad and his brother received asylum in Russia after their government's fall. Syria's new authorities have publicly asked Moscow to hand them over, though Russia has given no indication it will do so.

Media outlets including Asharq Al-Awsat and Middle East Eye have described Hassoun as roughly the tenth Assad-era figure sentenced under the new process. The sources reviewed for this article do not specify a single, official count, and it remains unclear whether that figure refers to individuals convicted, individuals sentenced, or completed cases involving multiple defendants. Syria's National Commission for Transitional Justice, created by presidential decree in May 2025, has a mandate limited to violations committed by the former government.

What Remains Unresolved

Several important questions about the case, and about the broader accountability process, remain open based on the sources reviewed for this report:

●       Whether Hassoun has filed or intends to file an appeal, and what appellate avenues Syrian law provides for a life sentence issued under these charges

●       The precise legal weight of the Constitutional Declaration and international treaties invoked in these trials, as opposed to a dedicated transitional-justice statute

●       Whether the process's exclusive focus on former-government figures amounts to selective prosecution, as some human-rights researchers argue

●       Whether, and how, abuses attributed to other armed factions will eventually be examined through the same judicial channel

Syrian officials describe the prosecutions as part of a broader transitional-justice effort. Independent researchers continue to debate whether the current legal framework can sustain that description as more cases move through the Fourth Criminal Court.

References

Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), "Syria sentences ousted regime's mufti Ahmad Hassoun to life for war crimes," Aug. 24, 2026: sana.sy

Al Jazeera, "'Barrel bomb mufti' Ahmad Hassoun handed life sentence in Syria trial," Aug. 24, 2026: aljazeera.com

The Washington Post / Associated Press, "Assad-era's grand mufti sentenced to life in prison by court in Damascus," Aug. 24, 2026: washingtonpost.com

Asharq Al-Awsat, "Syria Sentences Assad-Era Top Muslim Cleric to Life Imprisonment," Aug. 24, 2026: english.aawsat.com

Middle East Eye, "Former grand mufti and Assad ally receives life sentence in Syria," Aug. 24, 2026: middleeasteye.net

Shafaq News, "Damascus sentences Al-Assad-era grand mufti to life for inciting war," Aug. 24, 2026: shafaq.com

Al Jazeera, "Bashar al-Assad, Atef Najib sentenced to death in landmark Syria trial," Aug. 11, 2026: aljazeera.com

Syria Direct, "As Atef Najib's trial proceeds, what legal basis exists for transitional justice?" May 11, 2026: syriadirect.org

Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), "Inside the Trial of Ahmad Hassoun #1: He Fears the Lord of the Worlds," 2026: syriaaccountability.org

Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), "Inside the Trial of Ahmad Hassoun #3: Brief Session, Defense Brief," Aug. 20, 2026: syriaaccountability.org

Enab Baladi, "Hassoun Trial Hears Extortion Allegation in Detainee Cases," July 2026: english.enabbaladi.net

SANA, "Fourth hearing in Ahmad Hassoun trial held before Damascus Criminal Court," July 30, 2026: sana.sy

SANA, "Fourth Criminal Court to issue verdict in Ahmad Hassoun case Monday," Aug. 24, 2026: sana.sy

International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), statement welcoming Syria's National Commission for Transitional Justice: ictj.org

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article referenced a purported public statement by Syria's foreign minister reacting to the verdict. That claim could not be independently verified from the sources reviewed and has been removed.

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