DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The first public trial in Syria of officials linked to the rule of former President Bashar Assad opened Sunday in Damascus.

Atef Najib, a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria’s Daraa province under Assad and who is also a cousin of the former president, appeared in the courtroom to face charges related to “crimes against the Syrian people,” state-run news agency SANA reported.

Najib was in that position in 2011, when teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s security forces.

The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiraled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ouster in December 2024 in a lightning rebel offensive. Assad fled to Russia, while most members of his inner circle also escaped Syria.

Assad and his brother, Maher, former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armored Division — which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers — were charged in absentia, along with a number of other former high-ranking security officials.

Najib was the only one of the defendants who was arrested and present in person in court Sunday for a preparatory session in the trial, which will continue next month.

Crowds gathered outside the courthouse to celebrate. Baraa Abdulrahman, a spokesperson for the Syrian Ministry of Justice, said the trial “is of great importance for the independence of the judiciary, for transparency and accountability.”

One of the plaintiffs, Ramez Abu Nabbout, said his brother, a father of three, was killed when security forces opened fire on protesters at Daraa’s Omari Mosque.

“He was a civilian and peaceful, but Atef Najib greeted peaceful (protesters) with gunfire,” he said. “Of course we hope Atef Najib will be quickly convicted and will get the most serious sentence, which is the death penalty.”

The government of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has faced criticism over delays in launching a promised transitional justice process. Syria is struggling to heal following 14 years of civil war that left an estimated half a million people dead, millions more displaced, and the country battered and divided.

Authorities now appear to be moving more aggressively to prosecute officials linked to Assad.

Syrian authorities on Friday arrested Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades executing dozens of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon during the country’s civil war.