Rifaat al-Assad

Rifaat Ali al-Assad (رِفْعَتُ عَلِيِّ ٱلْأَسَدِ; born 22 August 1937) is the younger brother of the late President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, and Jamil al-Assad, and the uncle of the incumbent President Bashar al-Assad.

Rifaat al-Assad was born in the village of Qardaha, near Lattakia in western Syria on 22 August 1937.

He studied Political Science and Economics at Damascus University and was later given an honorary PhD in Politics from the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Rifaat joined the Syrian Arab Army in 1958 as a First Lieutenant, and was rapidly promoted after training in various Soviet military academies (mainly in the Yekaterinburg Artillery school).

In 1965, he became commander of a special security force loyal to the military wing of the Ba'ath and soon, supported Hafez al-Assad's overthrow of Salah Jadid and seizure of power in 1970.

Rifaat al-Assad played a key role in his brother's takeover of executive power in 1970, dubbed the Corrective Revolution, and ran the elite internal security forces and the Defense Companies (سرايا الدفاع; ) in the 1970s and early 1980s.

In addition to his military posture, Rifaat created the "League of Higher Graduates" (رابطة الخريجين العليا, ), which provided discussion forums on public affairs for Syrian post-graduates, outside the constraints of the Baath party.

With more than fifteen branches across Syria, this cultural project gathered tens of thousands of members.

He had a pivotal role throughout the 1970s and, until 1984, many saw him as the likely successor to his elder brother.

He was allowed to form his own paramilitary group, the Defense Companies, in 1971, which soon transformed into a powerful and regular military force trained and armed by the Soviet Union.

He was a qualified paratrooper.

In 1976, he visited Lebanon as a guest of Tony Frangiyeh since they had close and personal ties.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a general in the security forces of Communist Romania who defected to the U.S. in 1978, claimed that Rifaat al-Assad was recruited by Romanian intelligence during the Cold War.

On 28 June 1979 fifteen men were hanged in Damascus.

They had been convicted of attempting to assassinate Rifaat al-Asaad.

Numerous rumours tie Rifaat al-Assad to various foreign interests.

Rifaat was close to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah was married to a sister of Rifaat's wife, and Rifaat has on occasions—even after his public estrangement from the rulers in Syria—been invited to Saudi Arabia, with pictures of him and the royal family displayed in the state-controlled press.

After the Iraq War, there were press reports that he had started talks with US government representatives on helping to form a coalition with other anti-Assad groups to provide an alternative Syrian leadership, on the model of the Iraqi National Congress.

Rifaat has held a meeting with the former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

He was the commanding officer of the ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre ordered by Hafez al-Assad.

Later declassified material backs his claims that his brother Hafez al-Assad was responsible, as do a number of commentators.

Despite accusations, Rifaat has always denied culpability.

On 19 July 1982, Dodge was abducted by pro-Iranian militiamen, members of the Islamic Amal in Beirut, led by Hussein al-Musawi.

He was first held in Lebanon and then kept captive in Iran until his release one year later.

Through contacts in the Iranian regime of Khomeini, Rifaat was able to secure the release of Dodge and was publicly thanked by US president Ronald Reagan.

In 1983, Rifaat met with PLO leader Yasir Arafat in an attempt to appease growing tensions between Syria and Arafat's loyalists.

Rifaat al-Assad contributed to the release of US politician and educator David S. Dodge on 21 July 1983.

After launching a failed coup attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1984, Rifaat lived in exile in France for 36 years and returned to Syria in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state.

In September 2022, France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, confirmed the ruling.

In August 2023, Switzerland issued an international arrest warrant on Rifaat al-Assad after its Federal Criminal Court demanded his extradition to prosecute him for his role in supervising ground operations of the Hama Massacre.

Hafez Assad appointed him second vice president in March 1984.

In Pacepa's 1996 novel Red Horizons, Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu is quoted as saying that Rifaat was "eating out of our hand" and went on to say: "Do I need a back channel for secret political communications? A way to inform Hafez secretly about my future discussions with Carter? Do I need to have somebody disappear in the West? Rifaat will take care of it. Now he can't do without my money."

Pacepa later reasserted this allegation, describing Rifaat as "our well-paid agent" in a 2003 article in which he discussed the then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Rifaat was mentioned by the influential American think tank Stratfor as a possible suspect for the 2005 bombing that killed Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the string of attacks that struck Beirut after the subsequent Syrian withdrawal.

The goal would have been to destabilize the Syrian government.

However, there has been no mention of Rifaat in the United Nations Mehlis reports on the crime.

Yossef Bodansky, the director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, has stated that Rifaat enjoys support from both the United States and Saudi Arabia; he has been featured in the Saudi press as visiting the royal family in 2007.

The Bashar government remains wary of his intentions and carefully monitors his activities.

The warrant was issued as part of the proceedings related to the war-crimes complaint filed in 2013 by the human rights organization "Trial International" at the Swiss Office of Attorney General.