exile

On March 13, 2013, Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan, a judge at Idlib’s Civil Court of Appeal, publicly defected from the Syrian regime – an act that led him to be sentenced to death in absentia.

In December 2024, more than a decade later, Bashar al-Assad’s regime – the very one he had defected from – was overthrown, and al-Aryan was able to finally return to Syria’s judiciary.

In the latest step on al-Aryan’s journey from defection to exile to return, he was the presiding judge on Sunday at the opening of the trial of Atef Najib, a cousin of former President al-Assad and the former head of political security in the southern province of Deraa who faces charges of premeditated murder, torture leading to death and crimes against humanity.

Al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, a former top military commander, are also being tried in absentia. Both men fled to Russia after their 2024 overthrow.

Fadel Abdulghany, the founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), told Al Jazeera that the moment carries deep symbolic weight.

“A judge once sentenced to death by the Assad regime for defending the rule of law has returned to the bench to apply that same law to one of the regime’s most extensively documented perpetrators of violations,” Abdulghany explained. “This reversal of power dynamics reflects the promise of the rule of law so rarely fulfilled in post-authoritarian transitions. The significance of this moment lies not in spectacle but in its adherence to due process.”

Defection and return

Al-Aryan was a judicial adviser during the early years of Syria’s uprising, which began in March 2011, as protests intensified and the state increasingly relied on security-based rule.

By 2013, he decided that he had to break from the Syrian state and defected in a recorded statement that framed his decision as a matter of legal and moral responsibility.

“In light of the responsibility placed on the shoulders of judges, who are the guardians of justice and truth, and as a result of the massacres committed by the regime against civilians, children and women, … I announce my defection from the Ministry of Justice and my joining the Independent Syrian Judicial Council … to be a strong shield for justice and equality,” he said in the video.

After his defection, al-Aryan joined the judicial bodies of the then-Syrian Interim Government and became involved in building what was described as a parallel judicial track in opposition-held areas.

As part of that, he worked on establishing alternative courts, handling legal cases and documenting alleged crimes committed by the now former regime.

In response, the authorities sentenced al-Aryan to death in absentia and confiscated his property, including assets later sold at public auction.

After the fall of al-Assad’s regime, al-Aryan’s name re-emerged in June after a presidential decree reinstating dismissed judges. That process culminated in his appointment as head of the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, positioning him at the centre of the country’s first transitional judicial proceedings.

Najib’s links to repression of Syrian revolution

The transformation in al-Aryan’s life mirrors that of the man on trial in his courtroom on Sunday.

The position of the al-Assad family member as a top security official in Deraa in 2011 placed Najib at the centre of some of the first major confrontations between civilians and state security officers. Deraa is called the “cradle of the revolution” after government repression of protesters there inspired al-Assad’s opponents in other areas of the country to rise up.

One specific incident – the arrest and torture of schoolchildren detained after scrawling, “The people want the fall of the regime,” and the killing of one of them, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb – is widely regarded as the spark for the country’s revolution.

Najib’s connection to that incident and the death of Hamza is one of the reasons why his trial is so significant in Syria.

The former official was arrested in January 2025 in the Latakia region, where some former regime loyalists had taken refuge.

Transitional justice

For the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the trial is significant because of how it is being conducted and not just who is being tried.

Abdulghany stressed that “this is neither a revolutionary court nor a victors’ court” but a case that has moved through formal legal stages, including arrest by the Ministry of Interior, investigation, prosecution and referral to a criminal court in Damascus.

The charges include premeditated murder and torture leading to death, classified as crimes against humanity under international law. This framing, Abdulghany said, is deliberate: It places domestic proceedings within the framework of international criminal standards, which is essential for the credibility of any verdict.

Abdulghany also highlighted the institutional message of the trial and in particular the inclusion of the former president and his brother as defendants despite their absence from the proceedings and from Syria.

“Physical absence does not amount to legal immunity,” he said.

Despite this, Abdulghany stressed that the trial was not the end of the transitional justice process in a country where hundreds of thousands of people died and disappeared during the war and the five-decade rule of al-Assad and his father, Hafez. There is still little information in many of the cases of the disappeared and imprisoned. The SNHR has documented at least 177,000 cases of enforced disappearances since 2011 with the vast majority attributed to the former government.

Abdulghany explained that accountability in Syria cannot be reduced to criminal trials alone and instead must include four interconnected pillars: criminal accountability, truth-seeking, reparations and institutional reform.

These, he argued, must function together under a unified structure rather than as separate or sequential processes.

Abdulghany placed particular emphasis on institutional reform, noting that Syria’s judiciary was previously used as a tool of repression rather than justice.

“Without these reforms, transitional justice trials risk being conducted through judicial institutions that have not themselves been transformed,” he said, pointing to the need to dismantle exceptional courts and rebuild judicial independence.

Truth-seeking, he added, is equally essential.

Families of victims have a right to know what happened to their relatives, and this right exists independently of criminal prosecutions, Abdulghany said.

“They deserve answers,” he said, adding that recognition of truth, justice and reparations must be unconditional if any durable reconciliation is to be achieved.

By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones’ classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”

Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band’s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.

Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.

Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being “ugly,” although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.

This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.

(Associated Press)

Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel’s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.

“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own… It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,” writes Bob Spitz in “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”

Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades. It’s all here: The Stones’ evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks — “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street” as well as misfires like “Dirty Work”; Keith’s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the ‘60s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.

Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy.

Take “Satisfaction,” the Stones’ 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I can’t get no … satisfaction” on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger’s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.

Piercing the Stones mythology

Spitz’s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.

The most musically adventurous member of the group — he plays sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane” — Jones wasn’t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.

Author Bob Spitz

(Elena Seibert)

Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of “Exile on Main Street” in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nellcôte in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning — taught to him by Ry Cooder — leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That’s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.

Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.” But it’s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellcôte, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.

Beatles vs. Stones

One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them — until they didn’t.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a psychedelic mess.

The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover

As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released “Beggars Banquet” in late 1968 and “Let It Bleed” the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.

When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor — whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards — they produced what many consider their finest works, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” More impressively, the band, with Taylor’s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph “Hackney Diamonds.” The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.

Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.

Like most of the band’s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-“Exile” period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005’s strong “A Bigger Bang” and 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as “adequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.” That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album, “Brussels Affair,” recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.

These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.”

Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.