Asma al-Assad’s Family Responds to Reports She Is Divorcing Deposed Dictator Hubby
Turkish media outlets are reporting that the former Syrian first lady wants to end her marriage and flee to the U.K.
Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
The father of Asma al-Assad, the wife of deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, says his daughter is not seeking a divorce, contrary to reports in the Turkish media.
“I am able to confirm that the reports are false,” Dr. Fawaz Akhras told the Daily Beast in an emailed statement.
Turkish news sites Habertürk and CNN Türk in recent days suggested Assad was determined to leave Russia, where she and her husband are holed up after being granted asylum.
Habertürk also claimed, citing a report that it did not credit on Dec. 19, that Assad wished to travel to London to pursue treatment for leukemia—which she was diagnosed with in May—because “her health condition cannot be adequately monitored in Moscow.”
“She is receiving the best treatment possible,” her father told the Daily Beast.
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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also denied the Turkish reports of a divorce during a media call Monday. Akhras' comment to the Daily Beast marks a direct rebuke from Assad’s immediate family.
Peskov also rejected reports that the Assads' movements are restricted to Moscow and that their assets, including several properties in Moscow, had been frozen.
Asma al-Assad and her dictator husband fled to the Russian capital after a coalition of rebel groups overthrew his government, ending a half century of Assad family and Ba’ath Party rule. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a longtime ally.
President Joe Biden called the fall of Assad’s regime “a fundamental act of justice,” while U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer welcomed the end of his “barbaric regime,” which human rights groups have said killed thousands of civilians during a prolonged civil war, including with chemical weapons.
Assad, 49, was born and raised in Britain to Syrian parents, moving to their home country at 25 to marry Bashar shortly after he succeeded his father as president
A former investment banker, she was the subject of a breathless 2011 profile in Vogue magazine—since wiped from its website—that described her as a “rose in the desert” and “very freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.”
The article, which called the Assads “wildly democratic,” was published weeks after a crackdown on the Arab Spring uprising that saw government forces murder civilians, including via a “shoot-to-kill” order on peaceful demonstrators.
Like her husband, she is under sanctions from several countries, including her birth country.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said earlier this month that Asma al-Assad “is a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK.”
Dr. Akhras, her father, is a London-based cardiologist. The Financial Times reported that he and his wife have joined their daughter in Russia.
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