The Death of Rifaat Al-Assad, Uncle of the Former Syrian President

SadaNews - After various Syrian pages circulated news of the death of Rifaat Al-Assad, the brother of the late Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, two informed sources have confirmed the news.

The sources informed Reuters today, Wednesday, of the death of Rifaat Al-Assad, the uncle of the ousted Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, without disclosing further details.

Meanwhile, Syrian pages circulated the news recalling his past.

Rifaat became notorious for violently suppressing the Hama uprising in 1982 and is known as the "Butcher of Hama." He then fled to Europe after his failed coup attempt against Hafez.

He returned in 2021 under the rule of Bashar, who was said to have "forgiven him."

When Bashar fell, Rifaat attempted to escape through a Russian airbase, but he was denied entry and ultimately crossed into Lebanon, carried across the river by one of his close associates, according to one of the sources who was directly aware of the incident.

It is worth noting that in 2020, a French court convicted him of obtaining French properties worth millions of euros using money siphoned from the Syrian state and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Orders were then issued to confiscate all his properties in France, which were valued at that time at 100 million euros, in addition to a property worth 29 million euros in London.

However, Rifaat has repeatedly denied these allegations.