All news on the topic: Hafez al-Assad

Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon has become a strategic dead end as its desire to guarantee its own security collides with the weakness of the Lebanese authorities. The government in Beirut is trying to use diplomacy to restore the Lebanese Armed Forces’ control over the territory.

Inside a stone farmhouse south-west of Paris, the walls are lined with Khaled Alkhani’s oil paintings: dark, blurred figures with closed eyes or faces hidden beneath heavy black marks. Each canvas is part of his attempt to process the violence that shattered his family in Syria four decades ago.

Recently deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was popular among the Western ultra-right for his anti-Semitic views, Holocaust denial, and ruthless persecution of his country’s Muslim population.

As statues of Assad and his father Hafez were being toppled across Syria, in Damascus a jubilant Ghazal al-Sharif was rejoicing. He said: “Damn his soul and the soul of the entire Assad family"

Toppled president came to power keen to show he was different to his father but proved to be as repressive

While no one knows exactly where warmonger Bashar al-Assad, his British wife Asma al-Assad and their three children live, they have multiple palaces throughout country and a net worth of a few million