The perpetrators confessed that they had set fire to several locations in the three governorates and were first arrested last year, the Ministry of Justice said in a statement.
They were executed on Wednesday.
Eleven other people involved in setting the wildfires were sentenced to life sentences of temporary hard labor, with four others sentenced to hard labor, the statement said. Five minors were also given jail sentences ranging from 10 to 12 years for their involvement.
The fires affected 280 towns, destroyed more than 370 homes and damaged 11,000 hectares of forested land, with significant damage also caused to livestock, agricultural equipment and infrastructure, according to the Ministry of Justice. The fires spread across the provinces of Latakia, Tartous and Homs.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare visit to areas hit by wildfires in October last, Reuters reported, citing the official SANA news agency. Assad's hometown of Latakia province, Qardaha, was badly hit by the fire. The Ministry of Justice statement said that the perpetrators admitted to planning to set the fires at the end of August 2020 and that they carried out the crimes intermittently from September until October 2020. Capital punishment is permissible in Syria in the case of crimes including treason, espionage, murder and arson. In 2017, Amnesty International shed a light on a campaign of mass hangings in Saydnaya Prison, located north of the capital Damascus. The Human Slaughterhouse report, Amnesty Report, found that 13,000 people had been executed in the prison in a hidden campaign authorized by senior regime figures. The report alleges that prisoners were moved from their cells in the middle of the night under the pretext of being transferred, but instead were moved to the grounds of the prison where they were hanged. The Ministry of Justice refuted the accusations.