Maher Al-Assad is the brother of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and the leader of the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army. Major General Maher Al-Assad is considered directly responsible for all of the crimes committed by the Fourth Armored Division since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution in 2011 even though he was not officially the leader of the division until April of 2018.

Crimes committed by the Fourth Armored Division, all under the leadership of Maher Al-Assad, include, but are not limited to:

• Taking up the primary role in the repression operations committed by regime forces.
• Committing massacres which extend to the Damascus countryside, the city of Homs, Hama and its countryside.
• Bombarding and sieging in areas such as Dara’a, Eastern Ghouta, Daraya, among others, which resulted in the killing of tens of thousands, and displacement of hundreds of thousands.
• Randomly detaining tens of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians and killing hundreds of detainees under torture in the division’s jail.