ALBAWABA - Rifaat Assad, uncle of Syria's ousted President Bashar Assad, who is well known as the "Butcher of Hama", died at the age of 88 in the UAE.
Rifaat Assad, a former Syrian vice president, was convicted of money laundering in France and accused of war crimes in Switzerland.
Rifaat was the brother of Hafez Assad, former president of Syria and the former commander of the paramilitary 'Defence Companies' [Saraya al-Difa]
According to Reuters, the uncle of Bashar Assad escaped from Beirut to Dubai after the collapse of the Assad regime and the flight of his nephew to Russia in December 2024.
Why is Rifaat nicknamed the Butcher of Hama?
Rifaat was recognized for his role in the crackdown on Hama city back in 1982 when he directed the military to suppress an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood.
He and his around 40,000 soldiers, independent of the regular army, imposed a siege on Hama for nearly a month while conducting heavy shelling and ground assaults.
According to a 2022 report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the Hama siege resulted in the death of 40,000 people, with 17,000 others going missing.
