Reuters
December 14, 2024
A shoe rests on top of a bust of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, as fighters of the ruling Syrian body inspect the damage at a military site, in the aftermath of an Israeli strike according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, after fighters of the ruling Syrian body ousted Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria on December 14. — Reuters
Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign
collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told
Reuters.
Hours before he escaped for
Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defence ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing.
Civilian staff were none the wiser, too.
Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.
He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there.
“Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He didn’t even rally his own troops,” said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative regional think-tank. “He let his supporters face their own fate.”
Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader casting around for outside help to extend his 24-year rule before leaning on deception and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.
Most of the sources, who include aides in the former president’s inner circle, regional diplomats and security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked for their names to be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.