What the Assads did next

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, what Bashar al-Assad did next.

0:17At the end of last year, a new family moved into the luxurious Ryblyovka neighbourhood in the suburbs of Moscow. Packed with sprawling mansions, heavily armed guards and high walls, Ryblyovka is the most elite place to be in Russia, home to political elites, celebrities and a healthy smattering of oligarchs. It's extremely secluded. You know, just imagine high fences, cameras everywhere. At the same time, you know, these luxurious villas, a very picturesque area at the same time. There's the Moscow River next door. This is Pyotr Sauer, The Guardian's Russia affairs reporter. Funnily enough, I know this neighbourhood really well because I grew up in this neighbourhood myself.

0:57Oh, right. And I lived there for the first 16 years of my life. And he says it's definitely not the kind of place where you drop round next door to borrow a cup of sugar. Well, it's a strange neighbourhood because you're often, you're surrounded by beautiful forests, but also by massive fences and guards. And you don't always know who your neighbour might be. You know, Yanukovych, the Ukrainian ex-president who fled, apparently was living two houses besides me. But people had no idea. There were just rumours going around. The Russian president Putin lives there himself. And, you know, there's rumours that Edward Snowden lives somewhere around as well, on Roblovka.

1:38So, you know, it's an eclectic mix of people. So it's likely that the arrival of the freshly deposed Bashar al-Assad and his family last December didn't cause many curtains to twitch. So you don't really know who your neighbours are. And I imagine that whoever Assad's neighbours are might not even have any idea that they're living next to the butcher of Syria.

2:05Assad and his family had arrived to their new life in Rublyovka after the regime in Syria had crumbled around them. And in the years since they were taken in by Putin, the full horrors of what Assad inflicted on his people have emerged. Mass graves, secret prisons, thousands of people disappeared by the regime, never to be seen again. But since arriving in Russia, the Assad family itself seems to have just vanished. We've heard almost nothing about their new life. Until now. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus. Yacht parties, ophthalmology and a lot of takeaway. The Assad's lavish, empty life in exile.

2:58Will Chris, you cover the Middle East for The Guardian. Can you take us back to those days in December 2024 when you witnessed those incredible scenes of the fall of the Syrian regime? You were right there in Damascus when Assad fell. Could you just talk a little bit about how all of that disappeared overnight and he just kind of vanished without a trace? It was a stunning thing. People predicted that the fall of Damascus, if it came, would take weeks. That'd be a brutal battle. But at the end of the day, it only took a few hours. The speed at which the armed opposition is advancing across the country has astonished everyone.

3:42Rebels came from the north. The government has lost control of major cities including Aleppo, Hama and Daraa in the south. They took Hama and then they took Homs. Indeed, now they are getting closer and closer to the capital, Damascus. And then all of a sudden, Damascus fell. They're trying to screw you up! Quiet! Quiet! They're trying to screw you up! the entire state just melted away overnight. It's almost unbelievable because Bashar al-Assad was in power for 24 years. So for many of these people, they don't know any other leadership. But now they're hoping for a better future. And they're hoping that, you know...

4:19What was it like talking to Syrians there once they realized that he had fled the country? I mean, the first thing I felt was fear because I kept just hearing shooting. just constant shooting. And when we finally went out to the main square in Damascus, we realized there's actually people shooting out of happiness. That's the sound of bullet casings on the ground. Because people have been shooting all night long in celebration. We talked to people in the square, and they're overcome with joy. You know, they said he was gone, finally, and they could speak freely. You know, one of the things that we did in those first few days after the fall of the Assad regime was try to piece together the picture of how this happened and also where the hell did Bashar go.

5:05And reporting after the fact showed that for a few days before the fall of the regime, Bashar al-Assad was actually flying some of his riches and documents to Dubai back and forth. Instead of telling the people around him that his regime was about to fall, he was busy making sure that he could get as much money out of the country as he could before he had to flee. You know, Bashar left in the middle of the night. he told his other associates to stay and to fight on while he was on a, you know, in a motorcade going to the airport in Latakia to be flown to Russia. I mean, it was just the whole thing was, to be honest, embarrassing.

5:40I mean, this was not the graceful exit, you know, turn around to the tarmac and wave. This was a flight urgent as rebels advanced on his palace to save his skin. He's viewed as a traitor. I mean, he's viewed as a coward that didn't help his people till the very end. And what do we know now a year on about how he managed to escape and who was helping him? We know that the Russians took him in a motorcade from Damascus as the rebels were coming bearing down north from the country. And they took him, his son, and a close economic crony in cars to the Hemimim airbase in Latakia. And they took him from there on a plane to Moscow.

6:24They turned the transponder off mid-flight and left. We also know that he didn't tell anyone. I was talking to a friend of his brother, Mahal al-Assad, who was head of some of the most fierce militias under the regime. And they were telling us that Mahal had no idea that Bashar had fled and that he wasn't answering his calls for the days running up to the fall of the regime. So that's his own brother? His own brother. That's right. It was said that when the rebels came to the palace and went to his room, they found his shisha coals still burning. So he very much fled at the last second. And what we know now from research after the fact is that he first fled to Iraqi Kurdistan and then on to Moscow.

7:12Piotr Saur, you're The Guardian's Russian affairs reporter, and you've worked on this investigation with Will into what Bashar al-Assad and his family have been up to since the regime in Syria fell. I was wondering, first of all, if you could tell us, why was it that Russia went in and swept them out of Syria and gave them exile? I think to answer the question, you have to look at the history of Russia and Syria. The history of alliance goes way back even before Putin came to power under the Soviet Union. And that relationship remained after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it only grew stronger between Vladimir Putin and Bashir Assad.

7:51So Vladimir Putin obviously rescued Assad once already during the mass protests that sweeped the country in 2013. Vladimir Putin's intervention into the country proved crucial in keeping Assad's regime alive. Russia sent military as well as mass air raids to crush dissent against Assad. So when a year ago Assad once again came into trouble, Russia first tried to save his regime by again sending its military to crush the rebels. But when that failed, when it became clear that Assad could no longer sustain himself in power, Putin offered asylum effectively to Assad. I think one of the main reasons why he did it is out of sense of loyalty.

8:36Putin has previously saved other allies that got into trouble. For example, the former head of Ukraine, Viktor Yunakovich. So I think for Putin, this was a part loyalty test to show that he doesn't give up on France. Right. And in the years since the Assads have been in Russia in exile, there's been almost complete radio silence about their whereabouts and what their life has been like. So I was wondering if you could tell us what it is that you found out about what happened after they arrived in Russia. So the radio silence is intentional. The Assad regime is strictly told by the Russians not to talk to press, not to appear in media, to stay away from the public as much as possible.

9:24So it wasn't easy to really understand what life is for the Assad. And it took some time for us with will to dig and to speak to people around the family. And in the end, we got a picture that painted a very luxurious life. but also a very sheltered life. He sort of lives in this quite secluded house with staff at his home, with cooks, with drivers. He is guarded 24-7 by FSB agents who monitor his movements, who make sure that he's safe, but also make sure that he can't do anything that the Russians wouldn't want him to do. And a source close to the South family told us that he's taking ophthalmology classes and sort of has a dream to become an eye doctor again.

10:09You know, we know that he used to study ophthalmology back in London but never managed to do it so you know who knows maybe he'll open a little clinic on Muroblovka and which will serve the Russian political elites but at this stage it seems like you know for the next years he'll just be kept sort of in the shadows away from publicity we heard from sources that he's you know he's dying to tell his side of the story that he lined up a few interviews with Russia Today and with one popular American TV host who's willing to platform him. But the Kremlin said, no way, you're not talking. And for the Kremlin, it's important to realize that even though they see Assad as an old ally, they're also very practical.

10:54And for Putin, it's all about repairing or trying to create new relationship with the new leaders in Syria, with Ahmed al-Shara and his government, partly because they still have two military bases in Syria, which they hope to keep. So they're actually putting ideology behind them and trying to rebuild relations with the new authorities in Syria. How are they funding all of this? What do we know about the family's finances? Yeah, I think for years, the Assad family was investing into property in Moscow. We know that they have multiple flats in Moscow City, which is another elite neighborhood, which is this skyscraper neighborhood in Moscow.

11:37So they had a lot of property in Moscow ready to be sold off if needed. And they also channeled lots of money, billions of dollars over the years into Russia. They were sanctioned, obviously, quite early on by the West. So Russia was always a safe haven for them. We don't know exactly how much money they have, but it seems that they're very comfortable. So it seems like they live this very luxurious, opulent life, but it sounds also very isolated and secluded. Have we got any idea of what their social life might be? I mean, is Assad there with any of his kind of former cronies or other family members?

12:14Well, first of all, what I did was I spoke to a few people on Roblofka, the area I know so well because I grew up there. to ask, you know, is Bashir sort of, now that he lives in your neighborhood, is he sort of a welcome guest at dinner parties? Or, you know, is this sort of interesting figure to be around? And the sources I talked to all said that there seemed to be no interest in Bashir. Most of the Russian political elites see himself as a loser, as someone who lost a grip of power. And it seems like Putin himself also has no interest in inviting Bashir into his office or into the Kremlin.

12:51So he's sort of shunned by the Russian political elite. That points to quite an isolated, perhaps sad life, really. Okay, so that's Bashar. But have you managed to find out much about what the rest of his family are up to? So it was quite hard to infiltrate Roblovka, but there are other ways to find out how the assads are doing, and mostly through his children. We practically haven't seen Bashir himself once since he moved to Russia. We have seen his other family members, his wife Asma, together with his three children. They were spotted once together at the graduation of the daughter, Zayn al-Assad, in June.

13:34She graduated from Russia's elite Mgymo University. We found that his children, he has three children, Karim, Hafez and Zayn. We saw that Zayn leaked data online, showed that she was registered at an elite gym. She went to a upscale pedicure salon. And it seems like they spend a lot of time just shopping. The children order tons of food online, that they shop for expensive clothes. So, you know, in some ways, just, you know, like a normal sort of rich, elitist kids would do. What we do know is that the children don't actually live with their parents anymore. because they're adults. But I've spoken to a few classmates of Zayn who went to the Moscow Elite University and they told me that Zayn barely comes to class.

14:26She doesn't really go to social events and their sort of getaway appears to be Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Again, through leaked plane data that you could find online, we tracked that the family went out Bashir, but the rest of the family frequently flies to Abu Dhabi and Dubai from Moscow. There have been reports of opulent parties where the kids were involved in Dubai. So it seems like this is where they spend a lot of their time as well. We've only heard once from Hafez, the oldest son.

15:06and Havas made a video on Telegram where he sort of tried to give his own side of the story why his family fled he denied that they were cowards and he denied that they didn't tell anyone else about it that they sort of forgot about their friends and that was the only time we heard from Habez and afterwards he deleted social media and so he hasn't been hurt from since. Wow. And what do we know about asthma? She was very sick, wasn't she? Do we know if she's made a recovery? Yeah, she was very sick. She had leukemia and this was also something confirmed by the Assad regime before they were deposed.

15:46For a while we heard that things were looking very bleak for her but she seems to have recovered. We heard that the Russian security services directly took charge of her recovery. She was placed at this elite medical institution where Russian politicians also get treated. She was given some experimental medicine and now seems to have recovered.

16:21And Will, you told us that Bashar al-Assad has essentially abandoned even his closest family members when he left Syria, including his brother, Mahar. Could you just explain who Mahar is and what happened to him after the fall of his brother? So Mahar al-Assad was one of the most feared men in Syria during the civil war. He was in charge of the 4th Mechanized Division, which was a part of the Syrian army that was was responsible for a lot of the drug smuggling in the country, as well as was one of the fiercer divisions in terms of the fighting during the civil war. And Mahat really oversaw a lot of the militia activity and the military activity during the country's civil war.

17:05And this is some of where, you know, the bloodiest stuff happened, where the war crimes happened, the barrel bombing, the starving and besieging of rebel enclaves. He's responsible for a lot of that stuff. And we have had some kind of glimpses of him in Russia, haven't we? Can you tell me about some of the social media videos we've seen? Yeah, there was a video that popped up a few months ago where we saw Mahad just hanging out in a cafe in Moscow, sipping on hookah. And he didn't look too bothered. So Mahad al-Assad, though he might be estranged from his brother, is still living a nice life in Moscow.

17:37You know, online social media videos came out from his daughter's partying lifestyle in Moscow. We see her sipping on champagne, going on a yacht, living large and seemingly unaffected by what her father did in Syria. Are they able to travel outside of Russia or are they really are in exile inside Russia and unable to leave? I think Bashar himself, he can't move too much because he's, you know, so wanted. I know that the family in the initial days after the fall of the regime, they were hoping to make it to the UAE because obviously the language is easier for them and they're more comfortable in the Arab world.

18:13But now they've realized that that's kind of a distant dream for them, because even the UAE, the Assad family is a bit too hot. Coming up, will the Assads ever face justice?

18:42Will, it's such a stark contrast in just a year between, you know, the glitz and the glamour of what your reporting has exposed about the Assad's life in Moscow and the state that he left Syria in after decades of his tyrannical rule. I think you said 620 ,000 people killed, 14 million displaced, the country completely destroyed, all of it just so he could stay in power. Could you just remind us, just to set this whole thing in context, what we have found out about the human rights abuses he perpetrated since he fled Syria in 2024? Paul Part of the reporting over the last year is not only looking at how the future of Syria might look like, but also just cracking open this black box that has existed for the last 53 years.

19:32You know, I was talking to somebody who was within those circles within the Assad regime the other day. And he said, when are people going to get over the Assad regime? When are they going to stop reporting on us? You know, what's the big deal? And, you know, I don't think they understand that for 53 years, this was the kingdom of silence. We had vague ideas of what was happening in the country. Every now and again, there'd be a leak of photos and what we saw would be horrible. And so now that we have access to everything, information keeps coming out and the picture just kept more and more bleak.

20:03You know, we're able to look into these dungeons and we're able to see the ways that they tortured people. We're able to look at the files because they took meticulous records at who they killed, when they killed them, why they killed them, and the steps they took to repress a popular revolution. And what we now know is that at the highest echelons of leadership, they're aware of what they're doing. And not only were they aware of the brutality that they're exercising to keep the population under control, but they were actively conspiring to hide the way that they were killing and torturing people.

20:37They were moving mass graves from one place to another. They were manufacturing false causes of death. They were hiding certificates of death from families so they didn't find out. the Assad regime was cruel from top to bottom and in every respect. And we're, you know, the more we find out about it, the crueler it seems. In the years since, he's fled and all of this has really started to come out. Has there been any real attempt to get any kind of justice or to hold him or his regime in any way accountable for what happened? The new Syrian government has requested the extradition of Bashar al-Assad from Moscow.

21:14I don't think they expect it to happen, but it's something they need to do. I think, you know, this life of luxury that Assad is living in Moscow, it's actually quite a cruel contrast. You know, he fled the country and he fled accountability. He didn't have to be held accountable for the 136 ,000 people he disappeared under his regime. He didn't have to be held accountable to the mothers and fathers of people who never found out how their sons or daughters died. And it's likely he will never face trial. We know that transitional justice is central to the success of the new Syrian government. And as Syria as a whole, this is a country that's been going through civil war for 14 years and the civil war turned Sunni and Shi 'at against each other and neighbors against each other.

21:58And for the country to heal, there needs to be some sort of reckoning. And part of that reckoning is holding people who committed these crimes accountable. And the new Syrian government is trying. They're looking for people within Syria that are hiding and they're putting them on trial. But most of the people who are most responsible for the systematic nature of the brutality of the Assad regime, the torture, the disappearances, the killings, they're able to flee. And they're in third countries now. And it's going to take a concerted effort to bring them back and hold them accountable. And being in Syria, going and doing all your reporting there, I mean, the country year on from Assad's fall is a very different place.

22:39there are still pockets of sectarian violence around the country. And the new government under the interim president, Ahmed al-Shirah, who himself was formally designated a terrorist by the West, I mean, they're trying to find their way forward and figure out what a post-Assad Syria will look like. But when you do go back, do you feel the remnants of the old regime in the country still? Absolutely. I think, you know, the Assad regime a year on, it looms over Syria like a specter. It's everywhere. I mean, it's the reason for divisions in the country. And for years, people informed on one another.

23:18They were living under a brutal, pernicious security regime. And that meant that neighbors were informing on neighbors and meant that family members were telling on family members. And so there's broken trust and people need to repair that trust. and you know there's active attempts by remnants of the former regime to undermine the new government and this specter of the former regime you know it looms large for the new government too and it seems like anything bad that happens in the country it gets blamed on Assad remnants. We're seeing that in many ways the memory of the Assad regime is still very present.

23:49I remember a couple days after the fall of the regime we went to I think it was the postal service for just a story we were doing and we were sitting in the office of the director of the Postal Service. And I noticed on the wall behind him, there were two faded squares on the paint. And I realized that's where the portrait of Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafiz al-Assad, had sat on the wall for years, so long that the rest of the wall had faded, but not the paint under the portraits. Will, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. That was Will Christou and Pyotr Sauer. My thanks to them. You can read their investigation into the This episode was presented by me, Annie Kelly, and produced by Alex Atak.

24:34Sound design was by Brian McNamara. And the executive producer was Homa Khalili. We'll be back this afternoon with the latest.

24:55This is The Guardian.