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Who is Atef Najib, the man who fanned the flames of revolution in Daraa? 

Syrian security forces arrested Brigadier General Atef Najib in Latakia on Friday. Najib, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, was involved in the March 2011 torture of children by the Political Security Branch in Daraa, the incident that sparked the revolution. 


31 January 2025

PARIS — Syrian security forces arrested Brigadier General Atef Najib, a cousin of ousted president Bashar al-Assad and former head of the Political Security Branch in Daraa province, in Latakia on Friday. Najib was implicated in the March 2011 torture of children in Daraa province, the event that sparked 14 years of revolution and war. 

“The criminal Atef Najib has been transferred to the relevant authorities to be tried and held accountable for his crimes against the Syrian people,” the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) wrote on Friday. 

Najib was notoriously quoted by others as using the phrase “I am God in Daraa” to express his iron grip on southern Syria. Early protests in Daraa called for him to be personally held accountable, before raising the ceiling of demands rose to the fall of the regime as demonstrations spread across most of the country. 

Since the Assad regime fell on December 8, 2024, Syrian security forces—now under the new government appointed by Ahmad al-Sharaa before he assumed the presidency on Thursday—have arrested a number of figures accused of committing major crimes against Syrians, most recently Najib. 

Who is Atef Najib? 

Atef Najib, also known as Atef Haj Najib, was born in 1960 in Jableh, a city in Syria’s coastal Latakia province. His name appears both ways in official government documents, as pro-opposition news site Zaman al-Wasl reported in 2015. 

Power and kinship alike tie Najib to the Assad family. In addition to being a senior political security officer, he is the son of Fatima Makhlouf, the only sister of Bashar al-Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf. 

Najib’s mother, Fatima Makhlouf, married Najib Haj Najib, the owner of a gas station in Jableh. The couple had two daughters, Norma and Reem, and three sons: Atef, Ammar and a third whose name remains unknown. Haj Najib and his family benefited from Hafez al-Assad’s rise to power in a military coup in 1970, as well as from the influence of his brother-in-law, Muhammad Makhlouf, who became a financial advisor to Hafez and “built a business empire that flourished under his son, Rami [Makhlouf],” as Daraj Media, an independent news platform based in Lebanon, reported in 2021. 

Haj Najib sought to build a financial empire, following in the footsteps of his brother-in-law, but his ventures ultimately landed him in prison for several months, once he became a nuisance to Hafez as corruption and failures came to light. 

After graduating from Syria’s Military Academy, Atef was close to his cousin, Bassel al-Assad, the eldest son of Hafez. The two reportedly shared a similar personality and hobbies of driving luxury sports cars. Bassel, the heir apparent to Hafez’s rule of Syria, was killed in a car crash in early 1994. 

Atef held many positions in Syria’s Political Security Directorate. He served in Tartous from 2002 to 2004, was appointed deputy head of Political Security in Damascus and ultimately rose to become the head of Political Security in Daraa, a post he held until 2011. 

In Daraa, Najib began building a financial empire, extorting businessmen, traders and their families, and building a network of financial channels based on terrorizing people and the use of security reports. Najib controlled the entry and exit of goods, which traders were allowed to operate. He also controlled water resources—an essential lifeline in Syria’s southern Houran, a region heavily reliant on agriculture. 

Najib was known for extorting traders and businessmen from the time he was a junior officer in the capital Damascus, in the 1990s. In 1995, a dispute between Najib, Syrian businessmen and a member of the People’s Assembly, Muhammad Mamoun al-Homsi, climaxed in al-Homsi and Najib drawing weapons on each other in Shahbandar Square in Damascus.

In a 2013 Facebook post, al-Homsi wrote that the incident followed harassment and insults against himself and his family. On the night in question, Najib attempted to harass him in his car and al-Homsi pulled a gun, saying “you were a barber boy in Jableh and became Abu Ali in Damascus,” he wrote. Months after the incident, al-Homsi was arrested, stripped of his parliamentary immunity and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of assaulting an officer and inciting sectarian strife.

In early 2011, as the protests known as the Arab Spring spread across the region, Political Security in Daraa detained a number of children accused of writing anti-regime slogans on walls. They were reportedly tortured by Najib, who made accusations and insulting statements against the Houran and refused to release them to their families, sparking the Syrian revolution in Daraa. 

On March 27, 2011, a member of the People’s Assembly, Yousef Abu Rumiya, accused Najib of “stirring up strife,” saying what happened in Daraa was caused by “the recklessness of Brigadier General Atef Najib, who summoned security forces with helicopters, who immediately fired on citizens.” 

As popular protests escalated in late March 2011, Bashar al-Assad ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the Daraa events in an effort to contain the nationwide uprising. However, he did not remove his cousin, only transferring him to Idlib, where he served as head of Political Security. In June 2011, the committee imposed a travel ban on both Najib and Daraa’s then-governor, Faisal Kalthoum. 

Internationally, the United States (US) imposed sanctions on Atef Najib and other regime figures on April 29, 2011. The European Union (EU) followed suit on May 9. 

After the first months of the Syrian revolution, Najib gradually faded away from the public scene, his name only resurfacing on Friday as news of his arrest spread. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson. 

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