Lebanon has extradited a former Assad official to Syria for the first time since the dictator was ousted nearly two years ago.
Maj Gen Adel Issa, 67, a former commander of the Syrian army’s 17th division, was wanted by Damascus on charges of premeditated murder, torture leading to death, and other crimes aimed at inciting civil war and sectarian strife.
He will be tried in Damascus, and could face the death penalty.
The move marks the end of Lebanon as a haven for the hundreds of former Assad-era officials who fled north after the regime crumbled in December 2024.
Damascus has since sought the cooperation of Beirut to return as many as 200 former regime officials to face justice in Syria.
Syrian authorities are also looking to cooperate with Interpol on extraditions.
Assad visits Syrian troops in north-western Idlib province, Syria, in 2019
“We are seeking to boost the international judicial cooperation to pursue members of the former regime and [for them] to be extradited to Syria to complete judicial procedures and process,” Mustafa al-Qassem, an aide to the Syrian justice minister, said last week.
Maj Gen Issa was first detained on Aug 8 after visiting the Syrian embassy in Beirut to handle paperwork. Embassy officials then alerted Lebanese authorities that he was wanted in Syria, which launched a flurry of activity to process his extradition.
Three days later, Damascus handed down a death sentence in absentia to Bashar al-Assad, the former dictator, and his brother Maher al-Assad, head of the regime’s most feared military unit. Both are in exile in Moscow.
Atef Najib, another relative and a former head of political security who is in Syrian custody, was also sentenced to death, and appeared wearing a striped prison uniform in a cage in a courtroom.
The death sentences represented a watershed moment for many Syrians yearning for justice after years of oppression and violence under the Assad regime.
A defaced poster of Bashar al-Assad outside a Syrian army recruitment centre in 2024 – Chris McGrath/Getty Images
But they also raised questions about whether it would complicate efforts to return Maj Gen Issa, as the death penalty is cited by many countries as grounds to refuse extradition.
In the case of Lebanon, this was further complicated as Beirut had abolished its own death penalty on Aug 11 – a first in the region – only one day before the Assad death sentence was announced.
Beirut’s decision to process this extradition, however, suggests it is prioritising stronger ties with Damascus.
Assad family members – and the senior officials that worked for them – took refuge in Lebanon partly because it offered a convenient escape route.
Many generally favoured living in an area called Mazzeh on the western outskirts of Damascus, which is strategically located on the main road leading to Beirut in case they needed to flee the country at short notice.
Maher al-Assad had a hilltop villa with a ground-floor garage, where vehicles could exit directly onto that road.
The villa, too, had an extensive underground tunnel network.
Once in Lebanon, many of them felt safe under the protection of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, which sent men to fight on behalf of Assad against Syrian rebel units during the 14-year civil war that devastated Syria.
Some, including Assad, fled to Russia, while others are thought to have fled to Gulf countries, potentially with Hezbollah’s help.
Transitional justice experts have raised concerns that Syria’s use of the death penalty could complicate efforts to extradite more suspects, and efforts to receive international funding and cooperation.
This week, Syrian courts handed down yet another death sentence for war crimes – this time to Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of Bashar, making him the first Assad family member to be sentenced in person.