Aleppo court issues first death sentences over the March 2025 coastal killings of Alawites

The Military Criminal Court in Aleppo delivered verdicts on Thursday 15 October over the March 2025 violence on the Syrian coast. The National, citing SANA, reported two men sentenced to death, three prison terms and two acquittals, with public hearings having opened at the Palace of Justice in Aleppo on 18 November 2025 and an earlier tranche of rulings on 17 September. Al Jazeera reported that the two condemned were supporters of the ousted Assad government, sentenced for inciting last year’s uprising, and that members of the current government’s security forces also received sentences. AFP, carried by L’Orient Today, named a defence ministry official sentenced to 20 years and summarised the toll as more than 1,400 Alawites killed. Reuters reporting identified a three-year term for Ammar Abdul Aal for torture; two other named defendants were acquitted.

The same day, Syria’s General Intelligence Service announced the arrest of Ali Kayali, known as Mihraç Ural, named by SANA as the principal suspect in the 2013 massacre at al-Bayda near Baniyas. Enab Baladi reported he was detained while attempting to cross a border; Arab News reported he was born in Türkiye, fled to Syria in 1982 and built close ties to the Assad government. Asharq Al-Awsat noted that SANA did not say where the arrest took place or which country he was trying to enter, and reported unnamed Syrian sources saying he had been spotted crossing into Lebanon several times. No photograph, court appearance or third-country confirmation has followed. Separately, the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council in Syria and the Diaspora issued a statement on 7 October, reported by The Arab Weekly, warning against dragging the coastal region into new conflicts and demanding political and legal rights for its residents.

Assessment: The whole file runs through SANA. Wire services and AP photography confirm that hearings took place in Aleppo; the roster of defendants, charges and sentences is the government’s own publication, and the retrieved accounts do not reconcile — three prison terms in one, a 20-year term in another, a three-year term in a third. The number that matters is not the death sentences but how many of the convicted are the state’s own men and at what rank. If the serving personnel sentenced are junior and the capital sentences fall only on Assadists, this is a ledger balanced rather than accountability delivered. The Ural announcement has the same shape: an intelligence service has claimed a trophy without producing the man. Both figures in circulation — 1,400-plus on the coast, 1,760 in Sweida — rest on government committees or wire summaries of them.