The dramatic fall of the regime ended more than five decades of the Assad family’s brutal control of Syria [Emin Sansar/Anadolu via Getty]
The son of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has confirmed that a post detailing his and his family’s final night in Damascus before the regime was ousted was written by him.
Hafez Bashar al-Assad – named after his grandfather who also ruled Syria before his death in 2000 – responded to speculations over whether the lengthy post on social media was from a fake account or actually his.
“There have been questions over whether the accounts on X and Telegram are mine, so I wanted to confirm that they are mine, and I don’t have other accounts or any other [social media] platforms,” he says in a 10-second video shared online, as he is seen walking in what is believed to be a neighbourhood in Moscow, where he and his family are currently residing.
His account on X has been suspended, but he has retained his Telegram account.
Assad’s regime collapsed in the early hours of 8 December when rebels entered the Syrian capital city after a lightening rebel offensive which had begun the week prior, having captured key cities include Homs and Hama within days.
Assad, his wife Asmaa, his sons Karim and Hafez, and daughter Zein fled to Russia, which had helped prop up the regime throughout the brutal, multi-faceted conflict which erupted in 2011, after government forces violently suppressed democracy protests.
In his post which has created a lot of buzz online, Hafez, 23, said there was “no plan” to leave Damascus, let alone Syria, when the Baathist regime fell.
“Over the past 14 years, Syria has gone through circumstances that were no less difficult and dangerous than those it experienced at the end of November and the beginning of last December,” he wrote, in reference to the rebel offensive led by the Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) group, which had for years established semi-autonomy in the northwestern Idlib region.
“Whoever wanted to escape, escaped during it [the war], especially during the early years when Damascus was almost besieged and bombed daily, and the terrorists [rebels] were on its outskirts, and the possibility of their arrival to the heart of the capital was likely throughout that period,” he added.
The Assad regime had long labeled rebel groups and opposition factions as “terrorists”.
Hafez said that he traveled to Moscow on 20 November for his doctoral thesis, noting that his mother, Asmaa – who was diagnosed with leukaemia earlier last year – was also in the Russian capital at the time for treatment, adding that he returned to Damascus on 1 December to be with his father and brother, while his sister was with her mother in Moscow.
“On Saturday morning, my brother took a mathematics exam at the Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology in Damascus, where he was studying, and he was preparing to return to work the next day, and my sister had booked a ticket to return to Damascus on Syrian Airlines the next day, that is, Sunday,” Hafez wrote, referring 7-8 December when rebels closed in on Damascus and were about to storm the city.
“By Saturday afternoon, rumors spread that we had fled outside the country, and a number of people called me to confirm that we were in Damascus,” Hafez wrote, adding that to put rumours to rest, he posted a photo of himself in a park near the presidential palace in Damascus’ Al-Muhajireen neighborhood, which had been shared on his private Instagram account, now closed.
He said that despite hearing gunfire in the distance, there was nothing out of the ordinary he and his family had not been accustomed to since the start of the war.
He added that there were no signs that the situation was deteriorating, until they received reports about the regime army’s “sudden” withdrawal from Homs, Syria’s third largest city and which sits at a key route connecting Damascus to northern Syria.
“But there were no preparations or anything else suggestive of our departure [from Damascus], until a Russian official arrived at our house in Al-Maliki neighbourhood after midnight, that is, on Sunday morning [8 December], and asked the president to move to Latakia for a few days due to the serious situation in Damascus,” Hafez continued.
The Russian official, according to Hafez, had told Bashar al-Assad that the former president could possibly supervise the command of battles between regime forces and rebels from Latakia, a coastal region and Assad stronghold where Russia has forces stationed at the Hmeimim airbase.
Hafez said he was the one who contacted his cousins multiple times to inform them that they had been asked to leave Damascus, adding that staff working at his family’s house had left to an “unknown location”.
It is believed that Assad left Syria without informing his family members, and soldiers began fleeing once they were told rebels would enter Damascus and the fall of the regime was imminent.
“After that, we set off towards Damascus International Airport, and arrived there at about three o’clock in the middle of the night, and we met my uncle Maher (al-Assad) there, as the airport was empty of staff, including the control tower, and then we were transported on a Russian military plane to Latakia, where we landed at Hmeimim airport before dawn,” he said.
The dramatic events that night brought an end to the Assad family’s brutal, five-decade control on Syria, which is currently being administered by an interim government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The transitional government in Damascus has called on Russia to hand over Bashar al-Assad so he is tried for war crimes and crime against humanity in Syria.
Syria’s war is believed to have killed over half a million people and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population, leaving much of the nation in economic ruins.
Sharaa’s government is faced with mounting challenges of unifying the divided nation and disarming a myriad of armed factions and militias. He has repeatedly made reassurances that all religious and ethnic minority groups will be protected, but there are still some communities who have expressed concern about their future in the country.
There have been dozens of reprisal attacks targeting members of the Alawi minority to which Assad belongs to.
Many members of the former regime have been either killed or detained.
