By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of the ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad charged in Switzerland with war crimes over the bloody suppression of a revolt in 1982, has flown from Beirut to Dubai in recent days, two Lebanese security officials said on Friday.
The officials said that “many members” of the Assad family had travelled to Dubai from Beirut and others had stayed in Lebanon since Assad was toppled on Dec. 8. Lebanese authorities had not received Interpol requests to arrest them, including Rifaat, the officials said.
The UAE foreign ministry did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. The Lebanese officials said they did not know if Rifaat or the other Assad family members intended to stay in Dubai or travel elsewhere.
Rifaat, in his late 80s, was brother to Assad’s father, the late president Hafez al-Assad, and led elite forces that crushed a 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama, killing more than 10,000 people. In 2022, the independent Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) monitoring group alleged that between 30,000 to 40,000 civilians had been killed in Hama.
Switzerland’s Attorney General’s Office has referred Rifaat al-Assad for trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over killings and torture in Hama, under the principle that all countries have jurisdiction over such crimes. He has denied responsibility.
This month, Swiss judicial authorities said they had suggested the trial could be shelved due to his ill health.
The 1982 Hama assault is often described as the model for Bashar al-Assad’s later crackdown on the rebellion that began in 2011 and toppled him this month. When rebels seized Hama on Dec. 6, their leader Ahmed al-Sharaa referred to it, saying they would “cleanse that wound that has persisted in Syria for 40 years”.
Rifat al-Assad helped Hafez al-Assad seize power in a coup in 1970, and served as a vice president before unsuccessfully challenging his brother for power and going into exile.
He has lived in Switzerland, Spain and France, where a court found him guilty in 2020 of acquiring millions of euros worth of property using funds diverted from the Syrian state. In 2021 he returned to Syria.
The Lebanese officials said the wife of his son Duraid and their daughter had been held for trying to travel from Beirut airport on Friday using expired passports that had been tampered with.
Earlier this month, Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said top Assad advisor Bouthaina Shaaban had flown out of Beirut after entering Lebanon legally. In an interview with Al Arabiya, Mawlawi said other Syrian officials had entered Lebanon illegally and were being pursued.
Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said on Monday Lebanon would cooperate with an Interpol request to arrest former Syrian intelligence officer Jamil Hassan, accused by U.S. authorities of war crimes under Assad.
(Writing by Tom Perry; Additional reporting by Yousef Saba in Dubai; Editing by Peter Graff)
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