Who is Atef Najib, whose brutality ignited Syria's war?

Atef Najib, the notorious enforcer of Bashar al Assad’s regime, has been arrested, marking a key moment in Syria’s quest for justice. (Photo/X)

Before becoming the "cradle of Syria's revolution", Daraa was a kind of place people rarely thought about. It was just another dusty southern city where life had its slow rhythm, and the concerns of Damascus felt distant.

But in March 2011, a group of schoolboys in the city did something that would change everything.

Eighteen students from the Al Arbaeen Primary School picked up some paint. They found a school wall and scrawled a few words they had heard — "The people want the fall of the regime."

It wasn't the first time graffiti had been used as an act of defiance in Syria. But as the world later witnessed, it turned out to be the wrong place, the wrong time, and most crucially — the wrong man in charge.

Atef Najib was the head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa, a cousin of regime leader Bashar al Assad, and a man who saw any act of dissent, no matter how small, as a personal insult.

Najib had the boys arrested. Tortured. Their nails pulled out. Their bodies beaten and burned. When their families went to plead for their release, he laughed them off.

"Forget your children," he reportedly told them. "If you really want children, make more. If you don't know how we’ll send someone to show you."

The shattered families told the local press. Soon word spread. A fuse had been lit.

A man of the regime

Najib was born into privilege, and raised in the inner circles of Assad rule.

His family came from Jableh, a coastal city that had long been a stronghold of Syria's Alawite elite. Son of Fatima Makhlouf, the only sister of Assad's mother, Anisa Makhlouf, Najib graduated from Syria's Military Academy.

From the beginning, the path ahead of him was clear. Najib was never going to be a politician, never the kind of Assad cousin who made speeches or struck deals. His role was cruder: enforce, punish, maintain grip.

He moved through the ranks of Syria's brutal security apparatus, eventually landing in Daraa — a job that should have been straightforward.

But Najib never had the instincts of an administrator. He ruled with brutality. And when faced with an act of defiance, however small, his response was not to contain but to crush.

The trouble was, in 2011, the old rules no longer worked.

The case of Hamza al Khatib

Hamza al Khatib was just a boy, 13 years old when he stepped out into the streets of Daraa. His crime was simple: speaking out. His family's world shattered when he was dragged by Assad's forces, beaten, and tortured.

Najib, who ran the security branch in Daraa, didn't care. Hamza's body was returned to his parents, lifeless, bruised, mutilated.

The boy's face told the story of what had happened in those hours, the bloodied hands that could never hold a future. The infamous episode didn't scare people into submission. It did the opposite.

The protests started small — just a few dozen families, mostly relatives of the detained boys, gathering after Friday prayers. But then came the crackdown. Security forces opened fire, killing protesters.

The funerals that followed turned into larger protests. And when those were met with more bullets, the unrest spread.

By April, demonstrations had erupted across Syria. It wasn't just about the boys anymore. It was about years of fear, repression, poverty, and corruption. The security forces responded with more arrests, more killings.

A vanishing act

In the chaos of Syria's descent into war, Najib slipped into the background. He was sanctioned by the US and the EU in 2011, but it didn't seem to matter: he had no need to travel, and his wealth remained intact.

While other regime figures were pushed to the frontlines, making speeches or overseeing sieges, Najib stayed in the shadows.

Even after Assad fell in December 2024 — his rule brought to an end by revolutionary forces — there was no word of Najib. Some assumed he had fled abroad.

Others believed he was holed up somewhere, waiting for the dust to settle. Misdeeds rise, no matter the silence. On January 31, 2025, his name surfaced again.

"In a targeted operation, the Public Security Directorate in Latakia, in coordination with military forces, successfully apprehended General Atef Najib," a Syrian security official announced.

He had been captured in Latakia, the Assad family's heartland, an area where many regime figures had retreated in the final days of the war that also effectively ended 61 years of Baath Party rule and 53 years of Assad regime.

After nearly 14 years, the man who had played a violent role in triggering Syria's nightmare is now in custody and will be tried.

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Source: TRT