When Bashar al-Assad was toppled on Sunday, it turned the web page on not solely his 24-year presidency however on greater than 50 years of his household ruling Syria.
Before Assad took workplace in 2000, his late father Hafez was president for 3 many years.
Now, with rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) forming a transitional authorities, the way forward for the deposed president, his spouse and their three youngsters is unsure.
They are actually in Russia, the place they’ve been supplied asylum, however what lies forward for them?
Why did Assad flee to Russia?
Russia was a staunch ally of Assad throughout Syria’s civil warfare and has two key army bases within the Middle Eastern nation.
In 2015, Russia launched an air marketing campaign in help of Assad that turned the tide of the warfare within the authorities’s favour.
A UK-based monitoring group reported that greater than greater than 21,000 individuals, together with 8,700 civilians, had been killed in Russian army operations over the next 9 years.
However, distracted by its warfare in Ukraine, Russia was both unwilling or unable to assist Assad’s authorities cease the insurgent’s lightning offensive after it started in late November.
Hours after insurgent forces seized management of Damascus, it was reported by Russian state media that Assad and his household had arrived in Moscow and that they might be granted asylum on “humanitarian grounds”.
But when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was requested about Assad’s whereabouts and asylum declare by reporters on Monday, he stated: “I’ve nothing to let you know… proper now. Of course, such a call [on granting asylum] can’t be made with out the pinnacle of state. It is his determination.”
The Assads’ ties to Russia, particularly Moscow, are well-documented.
A 2019 investigation by the Financial Times discovered that Assad’s prolonged household had bought at the least 18 luxurious flats within the Russian capital, in a bid to maintain tens of tens of millions of {dollars} out of Syria through the civil warfare.
Meanwhile, Assad’s eldest son, Hafez, is a PhD scholar within the metropolis – with a neighborhood newspaper reporting simply final week in regards to the 22-year-old’s doctoral dissertation.
Amid the chaos on the weekend, Russian state TV reported that officers in Moscow had been in talks with “the Syrian armed opposition” to safe Russia’s bases and diplomatic missions.
Who are Assad’s spouse and youngsters?
Assad is married to a twin British-Syrian nationwide, Asma, who was born and raised in west London to Syrian dad and mom.
She attended faculty and college in London earlier than turning into an funding banker.
Asma moved to Syria full-time in 2000 and married Assad across the time he succeeded his father as president.
Dr Nesrin Alrefaai, a visiting fellow on the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), informed BBC News that Asma “holds a British passport, so might return to the UK” as an alternative of remaining in Russia.
“However, the USA [has] imposed sanctions on her father, Dr Fawaz al-Akhras, who can be reported to be in Russia,” she stated – suggesting Asma could need to keep put in Moscow for now.
In a report by the Mail Online, neighbours had been quoted as saying Asma’s father, a heart specialist, and mom Sahar, a retired diplomat, needed to be in Moscow to “console” their daughter and son-in-law.
Assad and his spouse have three youngsters: Hafez, the PhD scholar, Zein and Karim.
A 2022 US State Department report back to Congress stated the prolonged Assad household’s web value was between $1bn (£790m) and $2bn (£1.6bn) – although it famous that it was troublesome to estimate as a result of their belongings are “believed to be unfold out and hid in quite a few accounts, actual property portfolios, firms, and offshore tax havens”.
According to the report, Bashar and Asma maintained “shut patronage relationships with Syria’s largest financial gamers, utilizing their corporations to launder cash from illicit actions and funnel funds to the regime”.
It additionally stated that Asma had “affect over the financial committee that manages Syria’s ongoing financial disaster” – and had made key selections on Syria’s “meals and gasoline subsidies, commerce and forex points”.
She additionally exerted affect over the Syria Trust for Development, by means of which most international assist for reconstruction in regime-held areas was channelled.
In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged that Asma had “change into one among Syria’s most infamous warfare profiteers” with the assistance of her husband and her household.
Another senior Trump administration official described her because the “enterprise head of the household” and an “oligarch” who had been competing with Bashar’s cousin Rami Makhlouf.
He is one among Syria’s richest males and the household rift turned public information after he posted movies on social media complaining about his remedy.
Could Assad face prosecution?
Following the autumn of the Assad dynasty, Amnesty International’s secretary basic Agnès Callamard stated Syrians had been subjected to what she known as “a horrifying catalogue of human rights violations that triggered untold human struggling on an unlimited scale”.
This consists of “assaults with chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and different warfare crimes, in addition to homicide, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination that quantity to crimes in opposition to humanity”.
She known as on the worldwide neighborhood to make sure that individuals suspected of breaking worldwide legislation and different critical human rights violations have to be investigated and prosecuted for his or her crimes.
On Tuesday, the Islamist insurgent chief in Syria stated any of the ousted regime’s senior officers discovered to have been concerned in torturing political prisoners can be named.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani additionally stated his so-called Syrian Salvation Government would search to repatriate officers it recognized who fled to a different nation.
In France, investigative judges have sought an arrest warrant for Assad for alleged complicity in crimes in opposition to humanity and warfare crimes, in reference to a lethal chemical assault in Syria in 2013 below the authorized idea of common jurisdiction.
Russia doesn’t extradite its personal nationals – a authorized course of whereby somebody is returned to a different nation or state to face trial for a suspected crime.
Assad is unlikely to depart Russia to go to a rustic the place he may very well be extradited again to Syria or some other that may cost him with a criminal offense.
