Amin al-Hafiz

This article is about a Syrian President. For the Lebanese Prime Minister of the same name, see Amin al-Hafez

President Amin al-Hafiz 1965

Amin al-Hafiz ( Arabic أمين الحافظ, DMG Amīn al-Ḥāfiẓ , * 1921 in Aleppo , Syria ; † December 17, 2009 ibid) was a Syrian general and politician .

biography

After a failed coup attempt in 1962, the officer in the Syrian army , who belonged to the right wing of the Baath party, was initially banished to the Syrian embassy in Argentina as a military attaché . There he is said to have met the later Israeli spy Eli Cohen , which Amin al-Hafiz has repeatedly denied.

Major General Amin al-Hafiz, Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister since the Ba'ath Party came to power in March 1963, put down an attempted coup by the Nasserists ( Yassem Alwan ), who formed a coalition with the Baathists, in July 1963 and was also Minister of Defense from then until August 1963. He became head of state of Syria when the previous incumbent Louai al-Atassi was overthrown in another military coup in 1963 . From July 27, 1963 he was chairman of the National Revolutionary Command Council, from May 13, 1964 chairman of the Presidential Council (President). At the same time he was head of government from November 12, 1963 to May 13, 1964 and from October 4, 1964 to May 23, 1965. In May 1964, however, he had to hand over the chairmanship of the party to Shibli al-Aysami . Al-Hafiz formed a cabinet dominated by the right wing of the Baath party, which had to fight back several coup attempts by the left wing of the party and the Nasserists.

On February 23, 1966, he was overthrown by a military coup by Generals Salah Jadid and Hafiz al-Assad , from which Nureddin Mustafa al-Atassi emerged as the new president.

Hafiz was arrested but released in 1967, then went into exile in Lebanon and then moved to Iraq in 1968 , where he lived for the next 35 years. In August 1971 he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Syrian regime. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party instrumentalized him and other Ba'athists who fled Syria to set up a Syrian Ba'ath Party in Exile and a Front for the Liberation of Syria (1984). After returning to Syria in 2003 , Hafiz lived again in his native Aleppo, where he died in a military hospital in 2009.

Amin's son Khalid Al-Hafiz lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

swell

• The International Who's Who 1988-89. 52nd edition, Europa Publications Limited, London 1988

Web links

Commons : Amin al-Hafez  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Online Museum of Syrian History: President Amin al-Hafez, who ruled Syria in 1963-1966
• Amin al-Hafez, former Syrian president, dies at 88

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Syria: How Assad Stays in Power. In: Zeit Online. September 21, 2012, accessed December 23, 2016 . 
2. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/world/middleeast/19hafez.html
3. ↑ Newshub of November 24, 2019: Revealed: New Zealand's link to the mystery of executed Israeli spy Eli Cohen