A Syrian court on Tuesday sentenced the country’s ousted President Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia, news agency AFP reported.
The court convicted Assad, who was ousted in December 2024, over charges of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” during the Syrian civil war. Assad fled with his family to Moscow as Islamist-led forces closed in on Damascus at the end of his rule.
Assad isn’t the first former head of state to have been sentenced to death, either in person or in absentia. Several others have received similar sentences after being ousted from power. Here are a few of them:
Heads of state who got death sentence
1. Saddam Hussein (President of Iraq)
Saddam Hussein was ousted after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 under the George Bush administration. He was then sentenced to death by hanging in November 2006 by the Iraqi High Tribunal for crimes against humanity regarding the 1982 Dujail massacre.
The ex-Iraqi President was executed on December 30, 2006.
2. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (President and Prime Minister of Pakistan)
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1979 for the authorisation of a 1974 political assassination. It happened after he was ousted in a military coup by General Zia ul Haq in 1977.
Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979.
3. Chun Doo-hwan (President of South Korea)
Ex-South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death in 1996 for mutiny and treason relating to the 1979 coup and the Gwangju uprising.
Doo-hwan’s sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Even that sentence wasn’t carried out fully, as he was eventually given a full pardon.
4. Sheikh Hasina (Prime Minister of Bangladesh)
Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal in late 2025 over charges of crimes against humanity tied to crackdowns on student protests in July and August 2024.
Hasina fled to India after being ousted by the student-led protests on August 5, 2024. She has been in New Delhi since and has said she would return to Bangladesh in December.
Dhaka has said that she would be arrested as soon as she arrives in the country.
5. Nicolae Ceaușescu (President of Romania)
Nicolae Ceaușescu was the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party and the President of Communist Romania. When communism fell in the country in 1989, Ceaușescu was sentenced to death by a hastily assembled special military tribunal on Christmas Day that year.
The charges against him included genocide and subversion of the state economy. Ceaușescu was executed immediately by firing squad.