Damascus’s Fourth Criminal Court convicts the former Grand Mufti of incitement to intentional killing and of an offense intended to provoke civil war and sectarian strife, while characterizing the acts proven against him as war crimes and crimes against humanity
Damascus — 24 August 2026
Incitement in the case of Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun is no longer a theoretical question about the limits of a religious leader’s responsibility for his speech. On 24 August 2026, Damascus’s Fourth Criminal Court transformed that question into a judicial ruling by convicting Syria’s former Grand Mufti under the incitement provisions of the Syrian Penal Code and sentencing him to life imprisonment.
The judgment was delivered in the name of the Arab people of Syria, following a public trial concerning a series of acts and statements attributed to Hassoun during the years of the Syrian conflict.
According to the operative part of the judgment, the court convicted Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun of the felony of committing an act intended to provoke civil war and sectarian strife, punishable under Article 298 read in conjunction with Article 216 of the General Penal Code, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The court also convicted him of incitement to intentional homicide, punishable under Article 533 read in conjunction with Article 216 of the General Penal Code, and sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment.
It further barred Hassoun from conditional release and denied him the benefit of any general or special pardon because of the gravity of the crimes. The court also characterized the acts proven against him as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Reports published on the day of the ruling confirm both the life sentence and this characterization.
Article 216 at the Heart of the Judgment
The significance of the judgment lies not only in the life sentence, but also in the legal basis on which the court established Hassoun’s criminal responsibility.
The court’s reliance on Article 216 in relation to the offenses for which he was convicted is particularly significant because it places incitement at the center of the judgment’s legal construction.
Accordingly, Hassoun’s responsibility was not established merely because he served as Grand Mufti or was one of the most prominent religious figures aligned with Bashar al-Assad’s government. Rather, the court found that specific acts attributed to him went beyond political support or general expression and reached the level of criminally punishable incitement.
The court connected that incitement to two particularly serious offenses: an act intended to provoke civil war and sectarian strife under Article 298, and intentional homicide under Article 533.
This distinction is essential to understanding the judgment: the court did not punish an opinion; it attributed criminal responsibility to the speaker for inciting criminal acts.
From Religious Authority to Individual Responsibility
The case assumes additional significance because of the position Hassoun once occupied.
He was not an ordinary individual expressing a political opinion. He served as Syria’s Grand Mufti between 2005 and 2021, and his voice carried official religious and institutional authority in addition to its political influence.
That status, however important, is not sufficient in itself to establish criminal responsibility.
The governing principle is that criminal responsibility is individual. A conviction based on incitement requires the identification of the specific statement or act attributed to the accused, proof of its constituent elements, its relationship to the underlying crime, and the required criminal intent.
This is where the judgment may acquire particular legal importance. If its written reasons connect each of Hassoun’s acts to a specific crime and establish his knowledge, intent, and role in inciting it, the case could provide a significant Syrian application of an issue long confronted by international criminal tribunals: a person does not need to carry a weapon to incur criminal responsibility when it is proven that his authority and speech were used to incite the commission of crimes.
Before the judgment was issued, the Free Syrian Lawyers Association examined this issue in an independent legal analysis of Hassoun’s case, comparing the standards governing incitement, encouragement, and moral support with jurisprudence developed from Nuremberg to Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
The present judgment moves the question from theoretical comparison to direct application by the Syrian judiciary.
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: The Written Reasons Are Decisive
One of the judgment’s most important aspects will require careful examination once the court publishes its full written reasoning.
According to the publicly announced operative part, the court characterized the acts proven against Hassoun as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This is a legally significant characterization, but news reporting alone cannot answer the questions it raises. Which acts did the court consider war crimes? Which did it regard as crimes against humanity? What legal basis did it rely on for that characterization? How did it connect those international crimes to the convictions entered under the Syrian Penal Code?
It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the offenses for which Hassoun was convicted under Syrian criminal law and the legal characterization of the underlying acts as war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Publication of the judgment’s full reasoning will consequently be essential to assessing the legal value of this precedent, rather than merely identifying the penalties imposed.
The Judgment Does Not Close the Door to Further Investigation
A life sentence does not necessarily mean that every aspect of Ahmad Hassoun’s potential responsibility has been investigated.
Other allegations still warrant independent examination. These include information documented in Amnesty International’s report on mass executions at Saydnaya Prison, which referred to a role attributed to the Grand Mufti of the Republic in the process for approving death sentences issued by the Military Field Court, alongside the Minister of Defense or the Chief of Staff acting under authority delegated by the President.
That information alone does not prove that Ahmad Hassoun personally signed death sentences or bears criminal responsibility for them.
It nevertheless raises a legitimate investigative question: Do judgments, execution lists, or official correspondence exist that bear Hassoun’s signature as part of the process that culminated in the execution of detainees at Saydnaya?
Answering that question requires independent documents and evidence. It should not be conflated with the acts for which Hassoun was convicted in the present judgment unless the court’s written reasoning reveals that it addressed them.
A Life Sentence Is Not the Only Measure of Justice
The judgment against Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun represents an important development in proceedings concerning crimes committed during Syria’s previous political era. Its value for transitional justice, however, should not be measured by the severity of the life sentence alone.
The more important standard is the judiciary’s ability to construct clear individual criminal responsibility: identifying the act, proving it through evidence, determining the required intent, connecting the incitement to the underlying crime, and providing legal reasons for the characterization adopted by the court.
Justice is not achieved merely because a former official is now behind bars. It is achieved when a judgment can clearly explain:
What did he do? What did he know? What did he incite? How did his individual contribution become a basis for criminal responsibility?
This is what gives the Ahmad Hassoun case its broader importance.
The question has moved from the authority of the pulpit to the authority of law. Publication of the court’s complete reasoned judgment remains necessary to determine whether this case will become a genuine Syrian precedent for holding inciters accountable—not for their affiliations, positions, or political views, but for acts for which their individual criminal responsibility has been proven.
