Rifaat al-Assad

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Rifaat al-Assad

Rifaat al-Assad ( Arabic رفعت الأسد, DMG Rifʿat al-Asad ; * 1937 in Qardaha ) is a Syrian politician and military man. He is the younger brother of long-time President Hafiz al-Assad (1930-2000) and uncle of the current President Bashar al-Assad (since 2000).

Life

For a long time Rifaat was his older brother's "right hand man", built up a militia and was temporarily defense minister and later vice president of Syria . In 1982, after the uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria , he fell out with his brother. Nevertheless, in 1984 he was named one of the three vice-presidents alongside Zuhair Maschariqa and Abd al-Halim Haddam .

Reports from various human rights organizations prove his personal responsibility for the massacre in the notorious Tadmur prison near Palmyra , where in the summer of 1980, after a failed assassination attempt on the president in Damascus, he set up his special forces to murder around 1,000 political prisoners, mostly the Muslim Brotherhood , sent to prison. A related criminal case for crimes against humanity was long delayed in Belgium.

He was held responsible for the Hama massacre in the spring of 1982, where thousands of residents were indiscriminately killed or injured by shell bombardment 150 km north of Damascus, earning him the nickname "Butcher of Hama". When the army bombarded the city, 20,000 to 30,000 people were killed. At that time Hama was a center of the Muslim Brotherhood. His son Ribal al-Assad denies all of these allegations.

After a failed coup attempt , Rifaat al-Assad left Syria in 1984 and has lived in France and Spain ever since. Since then he has been a wealthy businessman and owns a large real estate portfolio in France, Spain and the UK. His brother Hafiz al-Assad ruled Syria until his death in 2000. After his death, he criticized the successor to his son Bashar as unconstitutional because he himself hoped to become president .

In the civil war in Syria from 2011 , Rifaat al-Assad saw himself as the third voice and appeared as the opposite of his nephew Bashar al-Assad. However, the opposition does not accept him - among other things because of the Hama massacre. Above all, his son Siwar al-Assad, who went to school in Switzerland, was politically active, ran a Syrian TV station from exile in London and was active in an opposition organization that his father founded.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Syrian Human Rights Committee: "The Tadmur (Palmyra) Prison Massacre on its 27th Anniversary," June 26, 2007.
  2. ^ Robert Fisk: Freedom, democracy and human rights in Syria - Ribal al-Assad gives our writer a rare insight into the dynasty that has shaped modern Syria. In: The Independent. September 16, 2010, accessed April 3, 2011 .
  3. ↑ https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sonntagszeitung/bund-ermittelt-gegen-assads-onkel-wegen-kriegsverbrechen/story/29405305
  4. ↑ https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/europa/Der-Assad-von-Genf/story/23395491
personal data
SURNAME Assad, Rifaat al-
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian politician and military; younger brother of Hafiz al-Assad
DATE OF BIRTH 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Qardaha