Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad is claimed to have been obsessive about intercourse and had a lover who set him up with the wives of his high-ranking officers.
Behind the palace partitions in Damascus, a portrait of the dictator has emerged – one in all a distracted, useless chief extra consumed by sexual intrigue and smartphone video games than saving his collapsing regime.
He additionally sidelined skilled powerbrokers from his father’s period, changing them with youthful confidants of questionable competence.
Amongst them was Luna al-Shibl, a former Al Jazeera journalist who turned one in all his closest advisers, and in keeping with a number of sources, his lover.
Shibl was stated to have procured different ladies for Assad, together with the wives of senior Syrian officers, whereas serving to form the insular, contemptuous court docket tradition that alienated odd Syrians.
Then got here her mysterious dying. In July 2024, she was discovered lifeless in her BMW on a freeway outdoors Damascus.
State media claimed it was a site visitors accident, however the particulars had been unusual – the automobile was barely broken, but her cranium had been smashed. Rumours swirled that Iran had ordered her killing for allegedly leaking concentrating on knowledge to Israel.
Others inform a darker story – that Assad himself ordered her dying after she started feeding intelligence to Russia and hedging her bets as his energy waned.
Bahsar al-Assad dominated Syria for twenty-four years, however his regime was toppled in December 2024
Luna al-Shibl was stated to have procured different ladies for Assad, together with the wives of senior Syrian officers
The reality stays murky, buried within the opaque world of Syrian and Russian intelligence.
Dozens of former courtiers and officers have additionally described Assad as obsessive about video video games, notably Sweet Crush, whereas Syria crumbled round him.
In keeping with one former Hezbollah operative, Assad would spend hours glued to his telephone, retreating into video games moderately than confronting spiralling navy and political crises.
Whereas Syria convulsed after Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel, Assad remained largely silent – whilst Israel launched strikes throughout Syria and Lebanon, killing key allies, together with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
In keeping with Lebanese politician Wiam Wahhab, Assad’s silence fuelled suspicions in Tehran that he was secretly feeding data to Israel, deepening fractures throughout the so-called Axis of Resistance.
When rebels started advancing on Aleppo on November 27, Assad was in Russia, the place his son was scheduled to defend his doctoral dissertation.
As Aleppo’s defenses collapsed, Assad remained in Moscow, to the astonishment of his commanders at house.
He appeared to hope that Putin would save him, however when the Russian president met him briefly, he made clear that Russia couldn’t struggle the struggle on his behalf. By the point Assad lastly landed in Damascus, Aleppo had already fallen.
The ambiance contained in the palace was reportedly one in all decadence and denial moderately than urgency.
At the same time as overseas ministers phoned with presents to stabilise his rule, Assad refused to reply, reportedly sulking on the suggestion he may need to compromise or share energy.
However as insurgent fighters superior in Damascus on December 7, Assad was nonetheless projecting confidence.
In keeping with these contained in the regime, he reassured aides that victory was imminent.
That very same night, an official assertion insisted he was on the palace finishing up his ‘constitutional duties’.
In actuality, the Syrian strongman was already gone. Underneath the quilt of darkness, Assad slipped onto a Russian jet and fled the nation, telling nearly nobody.
In keeping with The Atlantic, Assad had emerged from his personal quarters at midnight and instructed his longtime driver that he would want vans.
He gave orders for the workers to shortly pack up their belongings as a bunch of Russians waited outdoors his residence.
Underneath the impression that he can be fleeing war-torn Syria alongside his long-time employer, the middle-aged driver allegedly requested Assad if he was actually leaving them behind.
Workers had been instructed there was no house within the autos to take them alongside as they fled the nation.
Trying again on the driver, Assad requested him: ”What about you folks? Aren’t you going to struggle?’.
The exiled president then turned and went out into the evening, forsaking long-time allies and employees with the expectation that they might lay down their lives within the title of loyalty to him.
A few of Assad’s closest loyalists solely realised the reality when celebratory gunfire erupted throughout the capital, and militias surged ahead.
Left behind, senior officers scrambled to flee because the state they’d served evaporated in a single day.
The betrayal shocked even hardened regime insiders. Loyalty curdled into fury, with former supporters all of the sudden claiming they’d at all times despised him.
But the collapse was not merely the results of geopolitics, as many analysts initially steered.
Photos of Assad carrying Speedos generated ridicule on social media following the autumn of his regime
One image reveals Assad in nothing however white pants and a vest, clearly posing for the digicam
Bashar Al Assad and his spouse Asma arrive for a dinner hosted for the Heads of Delegation, their spouses, and Ministers on the Petit Palais, after attending Paris’ Union for the Mediterranean founding summit in Paris, France on July 13, 2008
Whereas Russia was tied down in Ukraine and Iran was distracted by Israel, a extra sordid rationalization has surfaced from palace insiders. Assad merely stopped caring.
The deposed ruler, branded the ‘Butcher’ for killing his personal folks, is now stated to dwell in three residences in a luxurious 1000ft tower with a mall downstairs in Moscow Metropolis district, a glittering enterprise centre within the coronary heart of the Russian capital.
The skyscraper penthouse is ‘lavishly embellished – cream-coloured wardrobes with gold trim, crystal chandeliers, and large sofas paying homage to Center Jap palaces’.
The ostentatious complicated, the place his household owns round 20 residences value greater than £30million throughout three flooring, is connected to a shopping center, which he typically visits.
The brutal dictator fled to Russia after a lightning offensive led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in December dropped at an finish a 13-year civil struggle and 6 many years of the Assad household’s autocratic rule.
He now lives together with his cancer-stricken British spouse, Asma Al-Assad, sons Hafez and Karim, aged 24 and 21, and 22-year-old daughter Zein.
Asma, who was born in London and married into the brutal autocratic dynasty in 2000, is described as being in a ‘severe’ situation from her leukaemia.
She has turn out to be accustomed to a lifetime of luxurious, with studies that she spent a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} on house furnishings and garments throughout her husband’s reign of terror.
Their plush Moscow pad gives comparable opulence, with a 20 metre excessive foyer flooded with gentle and embellished with fashionable artwork. There are sofas, partitions, and a welcome drink for guests.
They’ve an enormous heated bathtub in entrance of a 13ft window in a 990ft skyscraper, which enjoys one of many best views in Moscow. The lavatory is made fully of Carrara marble.
‘On Victory Day on Might 9, you possibly can watch the fireworks from the bath with a glass of champagne,’ Natasha, who sells penthouses in the identical tower within the Moscow Metropolis district, instructed De Zeit final 12 months.
The Assads ‘are in an excellent place and are having fun with the cash they stole. The Syrian folks imply nothing to them,’ the German newspaper, citing Syrian sources, reported on the time.
Assad is claimed to have the ability to transfer freely round Moscow however spends hours enjoying on-line video video games and in addition typically stays in his nation villa outdoors of the Russian capital.
He has been supplied with bodyguards from a non-public safety agency paid by the Russian authorities.
Assad’s youthful brother, Maher, reportedly stays on the 4 Seasons Resort in Moscow and spends his time consuming and smoking hookah.
His son, Hafez, 23, who studied in Moscow, beforehand instructed of the household’s escape from Damascus after Putin’s navy pulled them simply earlier than they had been engulfed by the revolution.
He admitted the downfall of the regime had come as a shock.
Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days enjoying video video games in his luxurious Moscow flat
‘There was by no means a plan – not even a backup – to depart Damascus, not to mention Syria,’ he admitted in a video, now deleted.
‘After consulting with Moscow, base command knowledgeable us that our switch to Russia had been requested.
‘A while later, we boarded a Russian navy airplane sure for Moscow, the place we landed that very same evening.’
Assad stays a wished man by the brand new authorities in Syria, which issued an arrest warrant on prices of premeditated homicide, torture, and incitement to civil struggle.
A good friend of his household instructed the Guardian in December: ‘He is finding out Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology once more.
‘It is a ardour of his, he clearly would not want the cash. Even earlier than the struggle in Syria started, he used to often practise his ophthalmology in Damascus’.
He educated in ophthalmology in London within the early Nineties, however was recalled again to his house nation following the surprising dying of his brother in a automobile crash in 1994.
Shortly after, he entered a navy academy and took over because the inheritor obvious to the regime.
The good friend stated he now lives ‘a really quiet life’, including: ‘He has little or no, if any, contact with the surface world. He is solely in contact with a few individuals who had been in his palace, like Mansour Azzam [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yassar Ibrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’
