The last days of Bashar al-Assad

On the eve of the fall of his capital, Bashar al-Assad boarded a Russian armored vehicle with his eldest son Hafez and drove off, leaving relatives, friends and loyalists frantically searching for the man who had promised to protect them.

Not long after, around 11 p.m. on December 7, longtime aides drove past Maliki’s home in the Upper Damascus neighborhood to find abandoned guardposts and mostly empty buildings: lights still on, coffee cups half-drunk and military uniforms strewn across the street.

By midnight, the then Syrian president was already on his way to Russia’s Hamimim air base with Hafez. Syriaon its northwest coast, according to a rebel military commander, a former intelligence officer and people familiar with the Assad family’s escape.

Not until he was outside Damascus Asad told his army to fold, ordering the burning of their offices and documents, according to a member of the rebel military council and a person with knowledge of the incident. Russia, one of Assad’s main foreign backers during the 13-year civil war, promised Himimim safe passage. An HTS commander denied that the group had discussed Assad’s departure.

Despite helping Assad escape the capital, Moscow still forced the father and son to wait until 4 a.m. on December 8, when they were granted asylum on humanitarian grounds. They soon set off for Russia, bringing an abrupt end to the family’s five decades of brutal rule.

The Financial Times has pieced together Assad’s final days and time in power from more than a dozen interviews, including with regime insiders and people familiar with the family’s movements. The source requested anonymity to speak freely to discuss the sensitive matter. Attempts by Assad and his family members to reach Moscow were unsuccessful.

Few saw the rebel offensive coming — not least the president, who thought he had won the civil war sparked by his brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011. Asad felt he was finally on the road to global rehabilitation. Following the Arab world’s lead, some European countries also started making overtures.

But in the end it took just 10 days for the rebels, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, to capture the capital after launching their lightning offensive.

In Moscow, Assad was reunited with his wife, Asma, who, people familiar with the escape said, had been undergoing treatment for cancer for a second time there for several weeks. Also in the Russian capital were his mother and father, Fawaz al-Akhras, who was hit with sanctions by the US Treasury earlier this month. According to people close to the family, Assad’s children, including daughter Zayn, who studies at the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi, have now joined them.

Assad left without a whisper to the people who had pledged loyalty to him for decades, leaving many former acolytes shocked and angry at the abandonment. He didn’t even bother to warn relatives — cousins, siblings, nieces and nephews, as well as his wife’s family — who were left to fend for themselves as the rebels advanced on Damascus.

Disillusioned loyalists saw this as the ultimate proof of Assad’s overriding self-absorption, a trait that drove him to unleash brutality on his people and plunder Syria’s wealth for his own prosperity.

“He fled like a dog in the night,” said a person familiar with Assad’s departure from Damascus. “He kept telling people around him that everything was going to be okay until an hour before he ran away.”

Then-Prime Minister Mohammad Jalali told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television last week that he spoke to his then-president by phone at 10.30pm on December 7 and told him of the terror and panic on the streets and the mass displacement from central Syria. Towards the coast “He replied: ‘See you tomorrow’,” Jalali said. “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’, was the last thing he said to me.” Asad never answered Jalali’s next call in the early morning.

The FT could not verify all passengers on Assad’s escape flight. But regime insiders are certain he left with at least two financial sympathizers who hold keys to assets held abroad: Yasser Ibrahim and Mansoor Azam. Although unconfirmed, it underscores the belief, even in loyalist circles, that Assad prioritized his wealth over his extended family.

In his first public comments since launching the HTS offensive, Assad gave his own version of events this week, saying he remained in Damascus until early Sunday morning, “carrying out my duty”. He insisted that his departure was not premeditated.

Videos taken by rebels and citizens suggest Assad flocks out of his private residence after his flight: family photo albums, stocked pantries and dozens of Hermes shopping bags and boxes in the first lady’s closet.

The sudden departure followed days of failed diplomatic efforts with his longtime benefactors Moscow and Tehran. While Russian and Iranian support had propped up Assad’s regime for nearly a decade, they were no longer willing or able to rescue him, now distracted by their own conflicts with Ukraine and Israel, respectively.

As rebels launched their long-planned offensive in northern Aleppo province, Assad turned to Moscow for military intervention. Four days later, following the fall of Syria’s second city and heavy losses in the south to rebels led by the HTS, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Damascus.

Araghchi left Damascus for Ankara, where Turkish officials hoped to receive a message from Assad. Instead, they got nothing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Syrian rebels’ main backer since 2011, has repeatedly tried to restore relations with Assad, most recently in July. The former Syrian president has rejected these attempts each time.

Asad grew increasingly desperate. According to people familiar with Overture, three or four days before leaving Damascus, he signaled to Moscow that he was willing to meet with exiled political opponents in Geneva for talks — something he had long refused to do. But the message doesn’t seem to have been sent by the Russians.

Since the rebels toppled the Assad regime, loyalists and profiteers have flowed out of Damascus – most of them across the border with Lebanon to Beirut, where many are holed up in their second homes or luxury hotels, with tight security outside.

In the plush, sun-drenched breakfast room of Beirut’s Phenicia Hotel, Syrians toting Louis Vuitton handbags ate poached eggs and kiwis and talked in hushed tones about their country and next steps. At one table, three women traded stories of their nighttime escapades and debated whether to enroll their children in a Dubai school. One spoke of someone he knew who had been missing since the fall of Assad.

Witnesses say those who fled to Beirut included several of Assad’s bagmen and top aides — vital cogs in the machine that kept the ruling family in power. Buthaina Shaaban, Assad’s long-time adviser, is one of them.

But soon, they spread out of Lebanon: those with foreign passports flew to European countries, others to the United Arab Emirates. Senior military officers are said to have gone to Russia or Libya. Shaban was later seen in Dubai, a long-time refuge for the exiled and ousted regime.

In contrast to Bashar, his younger brother Maher – commander of the army’s notorious Fourth Division and a key node in the regime’s centralized corruption scheme – warned his people to flee to Lebanon on Saturday afternoon. But he had to scramble to get himself out across the Iraqi border. The FT could not confirm whether he was in Iraq or had gone to Russia.

Among those Assad left behind were his direct relatives: his cousin and intelligence chief Yad Makhlouf, Makhlouf’s twin brother Ihab, and their mother. The three were attacked on their way out of Syria and into Lebanon, killing Ehab and wounding Yad and his mother, three sources said.

Ayad was treated at Chatura Hospital in Lebanon, according to two hospital officials in the area. He then left for Dubai, said a person familiar with the family.

His brother Rami Makhlouf was the government’s most important businessman, at one point believed to control half of Syria’s economy. But while Rami fell out of favor with the regime in 2020 and was living under de facto house arrest, Syrians with insight into the regime say Ayyad and Ehab were close to Bashar and his wife Asma. Rami’s whereabouts are still unknown.

Assad’s feared senior adviser and former general intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk is also missing. Several prominent loyalist Syrian families are holed up in the Russian embassy in Damascus, but the FT could not confirm their identities. The new government has told the Russians not to allow Syrian citizens to leave the country.

Four hours before leaving Damascus, Assad’s 23-year-old son Hafez was seen walking and chatting with friends in a park near the presidential palace. He recently returned from Russia, where he defended his doctoral thesis in physical and mathematical sciences, Moscow State University records show.

According to an eyewitness, he later went home to have dinner with his father. Rumors spread that Assad was going to give a public address, which had Syrians across the country and the world glued to their TV screens. It was unclear whether Hafez knew that, just hours later, he would be leaving Syria for good.

Additional reporting by Ayala Jean Yakli in Ankara and Daria Mosolova in London