Inside Assad’s Inner Circle: Shocking Revelations of Crimes, Financial Corruption

Day by day, new scandals emerge about Bashar al-Assad's character following the fall of his 24-year rule by the Syrian opposition. These revelations go beyond depicting him as “bloodthirsty” to portraying him as “stubborn” and a “blatant money collector,” exploiting Syrians openly and oppressively.

On the morning of December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad, 59, fled to Russia, marking a victory for the Syrian revolution that claimed over half a million lives. 

This event ended an era of tyranny that began in Syria with his father Hafez's military coup in 1971.

‘A Stubborn Person’

The Syrian people are increasingly interested in uncovering the “mental and psychological makeup” of Bashar al-Assad, shaped by those closest to him, which led him to shed Syrian blood, turn the country into a network of prisons, and create “human slaughterhouses” where torture and summary executions of dissidents were routine.

Assad also issued direct orders to his regime officials to carry out ethnic cleansing campaigns, demolish homes with residents still inside, use starvation as a weapon of war, and deploy chemical weapons against civilians to crush the revolution.

Mohammad Ghazi al-Jallali, Assad’s last prime minister, described him in a televised interview on January 9, 2025, as “an unjustifiably stubborn man who preferred to hide behind others and portray himself as knowledgeable.”

Al-Jallali revealed that Assad held preconceived notions about any given issue. Even when government studies showed that certain decisions were harmful to the public and should be reversed, he insisted on implementing them. Moreover, he instructed officials to appear on media platforms to assert the validity of these decisions.

For example, in 2014, while serving as Minister of Communications, al-Jallali proposed eliminating fees for registering mobile devices imported from abroad, arguing they burdened citizens. Although the cabinet approved, two months later, he received a call from the presidential palace ordering him to reinstate the fees on Assad’s command. Assad even instructed him to appear on state television to promote the economic benefits of the policy.

Appointed as prime minister by the ousted Assad in September 2024, al-Jallali highlighted this as a stark example of Assad’s prioritization of power over public welfare.

‘A Relentless Collector of Money’

Regarding Bashar al-Assad's greed, Haidera Bahjat Suleiman, son of Syria's former ambassador to Jordan, who was expelled during the 2011 revolution, recounted how Assad had transformed in the final months of his rule into a “money collector.”

Haidera revealed in a televised interview on January 10 that he was imprisoned under direct orders from Assad months before his fall, after he was unable to pay a monthly extortion fee of $50,000 for a tourist company he owned.

He was released from Adra Prison in rural Damascus on the night Assad’s regime collapsed, when local residents stormed the prison. He fled to Lebanon with other defectors, including officers and torturers loyal to the former regime.

In 2011, as the revolution erupted, Haidera was recruited by Syrian intelligence to help develop the so-called “Syrian Electronic Army,” tasked with discrediting political opponents and spreading falsehoods about them.

Haidera's father, Bahjat Suleiman, remained a close ally of Bashar al-Assad until his death in 2021, maintaining a longstanding relationship dating back to Assad’s father, Hafez. Bahjat held numerous security posts, including leading the infamous espionage branch (Branch 300) from 1985 to 2005, responsible for monitoring every communication between Syria and foreign nations.

Notably, Haidera accused Bashar al-Assad of orchestrating his father’s death in a military hospital in rural Damascus after he contracted COVID-19, suspecting that “Bahjat understood politics better than him.”

Meanwhile, Hama Governor Ahmad Khaled Abdel Aziz broke his silence in a television interview published in early January, saying, “Bashar is utterly vengeful, holding deep hatred for anyone who opposes him, be it human or stone.”

He further described the fate of Bashar’s opponents, “Anyone opposing Bashar would be arrested, thrown in prison, tortured to death, or left in a cell with little to no food, dying from starvation.”

On July 2, 2011, Syria TV announced that Bashar al-Assad had issued a decree relieving Governor Ahmed Khaled Abdel Aziz from his post following mass protests demanding Assad’s removal, with nearly half a million participants.

Ayman Sosan, the ousted Assad regime’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, revealed in an interview the day after Assad's downfall that Bashar Assad had been the mastermind behind a drug smuggling network based in Syria.

New Testimonies

Many children of high-ranking officials in Bashar al-Assad’s regime broke their silence, with some speaking out in the media for the first time to provide testimonies against him.

In his first public statement, Jamal Khaddam, the son of Assad's former vice president, Abdel Halim Khaddam, described the Syrian people as having toppled a “criminal tyrant.”

In a January 12 interview, Jamal Khaddam disclosed that his father, who defected from the Assad regime in 2005, faced a grim ultimatum in 2000: amend the constitution to pave the way for Bashar’s presidency or risk imprisonment in Saydnaya, a notorious site of torture and murder.

Following Hafez al-Assad’s death on June 10, 2000, the Syrian People's Assembly convened to amend Article 83 of the constitution, which stated that the president must be at least 40 years old. In a very brief vote, the age requirement was lowered to 34, Bashar’s age at the time, enabling him to inherit power from his father.

Abdel Halim Khaddam, who passed away in 2020, had been seen as a potential successor to Hafez al-Assad, serving as Syria’s foreign minister for 14 years before becoming vice president in 1984.

Meanwhile, Meflah al-Zoubi, the son of former Syrian Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Zoubi, spoke out in a television interview on January 7, revealing that he had official documents proving that Syria’s oil and gas revenues never went to the state treasury but directly into the Assad family's pocket.

Mahmoud al-Zoubi served as prime minister for 13 years before he was reported to have committed suicide in his apartment, where he was under house arrest, on May 21, 2000. Many suspected he was assassinated to take the blame for the state’s corruption.

The exposure of Bashar al-Assad’s actions over his 24-year rule, and the testimonies regarding his crimes against Syrians, will contribute to strengthening legal actions against him and his regime's members involved in the killing and torture of Syrians, both within Syria and abroad.

Human rights experts remain hopeful that Assad and his officials will one day be held accountable for their crimes in a legal court, especially since many of the top officials have fled the country.

According to Balkees Jarrah, the Deputy Director of International Justice at Human Rights Watch, the new Syrian authorities must consider granting jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court and reaffirm their commitment to justice and accountability.

This includes ratifying the Rome Statute and granting the ICC retroactive jurisdiction so that the prosecutor can investigate the crimes committed in Syria, according to Jarrah.