Ahmad Mouaz Al-Khatib

Ahmad Mouaz Al-Khatib Al-Hasani (Arabic: أحمد معاذ الخطيب‎, born 1960) is the President of the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution. He is a former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
 

Al-Khatib originally studied applied geophysics and worked as an engineer for six years. He is a member of the Syrian Geological Society and the Syrian Society for Psychological Science. He was previously President and remains Honorary President of the Islamic Society of Urbanization.

Early Life and Career

Born in 1960, Khatib comes from a well-known Sunni Muslim Damascene family. His father, Sheikh Mohammed Abu al-Faraj al-Khatib, was a prominent Islamic scholar and preacher.
 

Khatib originally studied geophysics. He spent six years working as an engineer. He is also a member of the Syrian Geological Society and the Syrian Society for Psychological Science, and was president of the Islamic Society of Urbanization. His status as the former imam makes him a key figure in Syria's religious establishment.

He later became prominent as an Islamic preacher, and became the preacher of the Umayyad Mosque in the early 1990s. After he was banned from preaching during the rule of Mr Assad's father, the late Hafez al-Assad, Khatib began to teach Islam secretly.

Khatib also established the Islamic Civilization Society, and taught Sharia (Islamic Law) at the Sheikh Badr al-Din al-Husni Institute in Damascus, and Daawa (Call to Islam) at the Tahzib Institute for Sharia Sciences. He traveled internationally to teach including Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Turkey, the UK and the USA. 
 

The Syrian journalist and writer Rana Kabbani, a long time friend of Khatib, said "Over the years, we have had a very intense political conversation about what needed to be done in Syria, long discussions about what was wrong with the society and what could be done about it. He was my window into Syria at a time when I couldn't physically go there." Kabbani continued to say"He comes from an area in the old city of Damascus, a part of the city that was noted for its advocacy against French colonialists, producing freedom fighters. It was a traditional Damascene Muslim scene, a devout Sunni area with a long history of resistance. "He cared very deeply about the victims of the 1982 massacre [in the Syrian city of Hama]. He was always seeking for ways to house or educate those [survivors] that the state wanted killed or banished."

From: www.wikipedia.org

Maher al-Assad

Maher al-Assad (Arabic: ماهر الأسد‎, born 8 December 1967) is the brother of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the commander of the Republican Guard and the army's elite Fourth Armored Division, which together with Syria's secret police form the core of the country's security forces. He is part of Bashar's inner circle and is thought by some to be the second most powerful man in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad.

Early life, education, and family

Maher al-Assad was born on 8 December 1967, the youngest child of Aniseh (née Makhlouf) and Hafez al-Assad. He was just two years old when his father became president of Syria. Like the other children in the Assad family, he was raised out of the public spotlight. Maher went to the Academy of Freedom School for his secondary education and then studied business at Damascus University. Following university he pursued a career in the military like his older brother Basil Assad who was being groomed to be his father's successor. When Basil died in a car crash in 1994, he was mentioned as a possible successor to Hafez, but in the end, Bashar succeeded his father even though he lacked the military experience and political ambition. It was speculated that Maher's reputation as a hot-tempered person influenced the decision in favour of Bashar.

Maher is married to Manal (née al-Jadaan) with whom he has two daughters. Maher, like his brother Bashar, is married outside of the Alawite sect to a Sunni woman. He operates a number of different business projects in Lebanon with his cousin Rami Makhlouf. There are reports of tensions between the two, which is considered why parts of the Makhlouf business were shifted in 2005 to Dubai. Some observers believe the transfers were made because the Makhloufs were worried that they were going to be made the scapegoats of an anti-corruption propaganda campaign.

Maher for a while controlled online media site Cham Press through his brother-in-law Mohamed Hamsho, a Sunni Dasmacene, who is said to be a longtime front for Maher's shady business deals. On 23 May 2011, the EU placed sanctions on Hamsho for providing funding to the regime which allowed violence against demonstrators during the 2011 Syrian uprising. According to Fortune Magazine, Maher benefited from the billion dollar money laundering operation at the Lebanese al-Madina bank which collapsed in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War. Al-Madina was used to launder kickback money of Iraqi officials and their partners in the illegal gaming of the UN's oil-for-food programme. Sources put the amount transferred and laundered through al-Madina at more than $1 billion, with a 25 percent commission going to Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies, among the recipients of this money was Bashar Assad's brother Maher.

Al-Madina bank records indicate that Maher's office manager, Khalid Qaddur, was transferred at no cost a Beirut apartment valued at $2.5 million, a transfer that investigators believe was intended to put it under Maher's control. The entire file on the Madina bank collapse is at the Lebanese Ministry of Justice, except for key parts that implicate Maher, which are still at the Lebanese Central Bank because people fear being killed over it. On 23 June 2011, the EU placed sanctions on Maher's office manager, Khalid Qaddur, for providing funding to the regime which allowed violence against demonstrators during the 2011 Syrian uprising. Similar sanctions were also placed on Ra'if al-Quwatli another business associate of Maher.

Military career

After Basil's death in 1994, Maher assumed command of a brigade in the Republican Guard and distinguished himself as a good commander. His time as brigade commander allowed him to gain valuable military experience and build personal ties with his officers. After the death of his father in 2000, he was promoted from major to lieutenant colonel. Maher subsequently became commander of the Republican Guard, a 10,000 strong unit whose loyalty is said to be guaranteed by the significant share of revenue that it receives from the oil fields in the Deir ez-Zor region, and the commander of the army's elite Fourth Armored Division which was once his uncle Rifaat Assad's Defense companies.

In June 2000, Maher was elected to the ruling Baath Party's central committee and subsequently was influential in persuading his brother Bashar during the first few months of his rule to put an end to the political openness of the short lived Damascus Spring. Three years later Maher met in Jordan with Israeli businessman Eitan Bentzur, a former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and offered to reopen peace negotiations with Israel without preconditions. The offer was rejected by Arial Sharon the Prime Minister of Israel.

Maher has often appeared in public with Bashar and is said to be one of his closest advisers. He has competed with General Assef Shawqat, who is married to his sister Bushra al-Assad and is the former head of military intelligence, for influence in the Assad regime. In October 1999, he is rumoured to have shot Assef Shawqat in the stomach during an argument. Assef survived, and the two are said to have good relations now. Bashar, Maher, and Assef are said to form the inner circle of power in the Assad regime.

Both Shawkat and Maher al-Assad were mentioned in a leaked draft version of the Mehlis report as suspects in the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. According to the draft version, "one witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, Maher Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil Al-Sayyed decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri."

In 2008, Maher was in charge of putting down a prison revolt in Saidnaya. Around 25 people were killed during the violent crack down. Human rights groups have video footage that shows Maher taking photographs with his mobile phone of the dismembered bodies of political prisoners after the riot. Maher's sister-in-law, Majd al-Jadaan, who lives in exile confirmed that the individual in the video footage was him.

2011 - 2012 Syrian uprising

Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in mid-March, Maher's troops have played a key role in violently suppressing protests in the southern city of Daraa, the coastal city of Banias, the central province of Homs and the northern province of Idlib. The Los Angeles Times reported that video footage exists, which activists and observers claim shows Maher personally shooting at unarmed protesters, who are demanding the fall of the Assad regime in the Barzeh suburb of Damascus. Defecting soldiers under Maher's command report they were given orders by him to use deadly force against unarmed protesters. One defecting sniper reported that during the protests in Deraa: "We were ordered to aim for the head or heart from the beginning. We were not given specific numbers but told to kill as many as possible as long as there were protests."

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stated that Maher's actions during the Syrian uprising approached "savagery", and he pressured Bashar Assad to remove Maher from command of the military and to send him into exile. The United States on 27 April 2011 placed sanctions on Maher for being a facilitator of human rights violations in Syria. Two weeks later on 10 May 2011 the EU sanctioned Maher for being the principal overseer of violence against demonstrators during the 2011 Syrian uprising. The Arab league issued a list of 19 Syrian officials banned from travelling to Arab countries and whose assets are being frozen by those countries. Among those named are Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad, his cousin and telecom magnate Rami Makhluf, as well as military and intelligence figures.

On December 2, 2011, he was placed on a travel ban.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Bassel al-Assad

Bassel al-Assad (Arabic: باسل الأسد, Bāssel al-Assad) (March 23, 1962 – January 21, 1994) was a son of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (Arabic: حافظ الأسد).

Biography

From a young age, Bassel was groomed to fill the role of President by his father, Hafez al-Assad. He was chief of presidential security while running a highly publicized anti-corruption campaign within the regime, and frequently appeared in full military uniform at official receptions, signaling the regime's commitment to the armed forces. He also had a reputation for being an aficionado of fast cars.

In January 1994, driving his own Mercedes at high speed through fog to Damascus International Airport in the early hours of the morning, Bassel is said to have collided with a motorway roundabout, and he died instantly.

Bassel's death led to his lesser-known brother Bashar al-Assad, then undertaking sub-speciality training in ophthalmology in London, assuming the mantle of President-in-waiting. Bashar became President following the death of Hafez on June 10, 2000.

The state-run Syrian media sometimes refers to Bassel as "Bassel the Martyr", and numerous squares and streets have been named after him. His statue is found in several Syrian cities, and even after his death he is often pictured at billboards with his father and brother. He is buried in Qardaha, his father's village of birth, in a large mausoleum, where Hafez al-Assad was laid to rest beside him in 2000.[citation needed]

Bassel was a popular sportsman and horse riding champion, winning several tournaments in shooting and equestrian sports, including the gold medal of the Latakia Mediterranean Games in 1987. The International Fair Play Committee awarded him the Diploma of Attitude in 1991.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Rifaat al-Assad

Rifaat Ali al-Assad (Arabic: رفعت عالي الأسد‎; born 22 August 1937) is the younger brother of the former President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, and the uncle of the incumbent President Bashar al-Assad, all of whom come from the minority Alawite Muslim sect. He was born in the village of Qardaha, near Lattakia in western Syria. He is perhaps best known for personally overseeing the Hama massacre of 1982.

Under Hafez's rule

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

In February 1982, as commanding general of the Syrian Army, he commanded the forces that put down a Muslim Brotherhood revolt in the central city of Hama, by instructing his forces to shell the city, killing thousands of its inhabitants (reports range from between 5,000 and 40,000, the most common suggestion being around 15-20,000). This became known as the Hama Massacre. The United States journalist Thomas Friedman claims in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem that Rifaat later bragged that the total number of victims was no less than 38,000.

Attempted coup d'état

When Hafez al-Assad suffered from heart problems in 1983, he established a six-member committee to run the country. Rifaat was not included, and the council consisted entirely of close Sunni Muslim loyalists to Hafez, who were mostly lightweights in the military-security establishment. This caused unease in the Alawi-dominated officer corps, and several high-ranking officers began rallying around Rifaat, while others remained loyal to Hafez's instructions. Rifaat's troops, now numbering more than 55,000 with tanks, artillery, aircraft and helicopters, began asserting control over Damascus, putting up posters of him; he was clearly launching a bid to succeed his brother. Tensions between forces loyal to Hafez and those loyal to Rifaat were extreme, but by early 1984 Hafez had returned from his sick bed and assumed full control, at which point most officers rallied around him. In what at first seemed a compromise, Rifaat was made vice-president with responsibility for security affairs, but this proved a wholly nominal post. Command of the 'Defense Companies' was transferred to another officer, and Rifaat was then sent abroad on "an open-ended working visit". His closest supporters and others who had failed to prove their loyalty to Hafez were purged from the army and Baath Party in the years that followed.

During the 1990s

Although he returned for his mother's funeral in 1992, and for some time lived in Syria, Rifaat was thereafter confined to exile in France and Spain. He nominally retained the post of vice president until 1998, when he was stripped of this. He had retained a large business empire both in Syria and abroad, partly through his son Sumer. However, the 1999 crackdown, involving armed clashes in Lattakia, destroyed much of his remaining network in Syria; large numbers of Rifaat's supporters were arrested. This was seen as tied to the issue of succession, with Rifaat having begun to position himself to succeed the ailing Hafez, who in his turn sought to eliminate all potential competition for his designated successor, his son Bashar al-Assad.

In France, Rifaat has loudly protested the succession of Bashar to the post of president, claiming that he himself embodies the "only constitutional legality" (as vice president, alleging his dismissal was unconstitutional). He has made threatening remarks about planning to return to Syria at a time of his choosing to assume "his responsibilities and fulfill the will of the people", and that while he will rule benevolently and democratically, he will do so with "the power of the people and the army" behind him.

Groups and organizations

Rifaat's son Sumer is the head of a minor pan-Arab TV channel, the Arab News Network (ANN), which functions as his father's political mouthpiece. He also claims to run a political party, of uncertain fortunes. Rifaat himself heads the United National Group (al-tajammu` al-qawmi al-muwahhid), which is another political party or alliance; it is known to have self-professed members among Rifaat's fellow exiles from Syria, but neither can be considered an active organization, even if they will regularly release statements in favor of Rifaat's return to Syria and protesting president Bashar al-Asad. Further, Rifaat founded the Arab Democratic Party in Lebanon in the early 1970s, a small Alawite sectarian/political group in Lebanon, which during the Lebanese Civil War acted as an armed militia loyal to the Syrian regime (through Rifaat). Ali Eid the general secretary of the party today, supports the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.

Foreign support for Rifaat

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

Rifaat is considered close, by some observers, to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is 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.

It is claimed that Rifaat is reputed to have turned even to Israel asking for assistance, and that he has initiated contacts with exiled representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood.[citation needed] 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. Yossef Bodansky, the director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, has stated that Rifaat enjoys support from both America and Saudi Arabia; he has been featured in the Saudi press as visiting the royal family in 2007. The Bashar regime remains wary of his intentions and carefully monitors his activities.

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 has struck Beirut after the subsequent Syrian withdrawal. The goal would be to destabilize the Syrian regime. However, there has been no mention of Rifaat in the United Nations Mehlis reports on the crime.

As of 2010[update] Rifaat is living in Mayfair, London.

As of 2011[update] Rifaat is living in Avenue Foch, Paris, while trying to sell off his real estate properties.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Syrian-American brothers in arms join Syria fight

Two Syrian-American brothers sneaked back into Syria to fight the Assad government. They ran into their father in the besieged city of Idlib, and he was not happy to see them.

Last week, a 20-year-old man called Abdul knocked on the door of a house outside Philadelphia.

He knew the apartment was packed with relatives waiting for him, and he was nervous.

When the door opened, two brothers, several cousins and uncles crowded around him and slapped him on the back. Abdul - a blue-eyed, muscular young man - fell into his mother's arms.

"It's enough, mum," he whispered to her in Arabic. "Stop crying. I'm here now."

It was a homecoming with a difference.

Missing

Abdul's mother and the rest of the family had not heard from him since mid-February.

He had told his parents he was going to Turkey, where his older brother Mo was helping Syrian refugees who had crossed the border from the fighting in northern Syria.

The two brothers, Abdul and Mo, disappeared soon afterwards. Abdul says the two sneaked into Syria itself and joined the rebel Free Syrian Army.

"I made my decision to fight," Abdul said in an interview at a travel agency office in downtown Antakya, Turkey, before he returned to the US.

The brothers were born in the US but moved to Syria as young children. In 2009, Abdul returned to the US to attend university in New Jersey.

When the Syrian uprising kicked off a year ago, Abdul became consumed by news of the struggle.

"I was on Facebook for one year - I didn't go out," he said. "I was like, with them [the opposition fighters] - but in a different country."

In early February, Abdul had had enough sitting on the sidelines.

He dropped out of university, paid off his credit card debts, and flew to Turkey, intent on joining the fight. (Some Syrian-American friends were supposed to join him, but backed out at the last minute.)

He landed in Istanbul, then caught a bus 18 hours to the Syrian border. There he and Mo spent five days looking for weapons - without success, he said.

The brothers sneaked over the border on 18 February and joined a small band of rebels.

After several days of training in a mountainous region inside Syria, they and a unit of about 35 fighters made their way on foot and by car to the brothers' hometown of Idlib, then an opposition stronghold in the north-west of Syria.

Hiding from Dad

Meanwhile, Abdul's mother and two younger brothers made the reverse trip, fleeing the violence in Idlib to take refuge in New Jersey.

The boys' father Michael remained behind in Idlib to tend to his drugstore.

By the time Abdul got to Idlib, he had not seen his father for more than two years. But he was keen not to let him know he had returned.

"We were in the same protest," he said, "but I was hiding behind people so he wouldn't see me."

Abdul feared his father would order him out of the country if he discovered him.

"He'd kick me out!"

Michael and his two sons were finally reunited the next day, as fighting broke out in the city.

"The tanks started at 05:00 exactly in the morning," Michael recalled in an interview in Turkey. "You could hear the bombing and shelling. The sound of bullets was like listening to rain."

The Syrian army stormed Idlib on 10 March. Michael says he was holed up in his apartment. Then his phone rang. His sister, also in Idlib, delivered a confusing message: "Come get your boys."

"I said: 'What boys?'" Michael said. He told his sister: "Thank God my boys are not here. They are outside the country!"

"No, no," she answered back. "Your boys are surrounded with tanks and they are at their uncle's house and they don't know what to do."

"My boys?"

"Yes."

Flight from Idlib

Abdul said he and his brother Mo fought with a rebel unit that day. The squad leader was injured, and realising their rusty Kalashnikovs could do nothing against the army's tanks and shells, the brothers retreated to their uncle's house nearby.

Michael jumped in his car and drove through the shelling to find his sons.

He did not give them a warm welcome.

"Of course I didn't say hello. I was cursing very, very strong words," he says. "I'm sorry to say that but I was very angry. I had been worried about myself. Now I was worrying about three people."

With the help of friends, Michael arranged for several opposition fighters to smuggle them out of Idlib.

Abdul said their flight was scary. A tank positioned about 70ft (21m) away turned its cannon toward them as they ran across the road surrounding Idlib. They managed to escape through an olive grove.

Their father Michael sneaked out of Idlib the same night, and the three were reunited the next day in southern Turkey.

No promises

Michael said he finally kissed his sons then, but he still had harsh words.

"It was stupid what they did. Very stupid," he said. "People were paying a lot of money to get out, and they couldn't get out. They [my sons] came by themselves. They went into a death trap."

But Abdul defended his and Mo's acts.

"When you see dead bodies and your friends getting killed," he said, "you're not going to be afraid of anything."

He says the government's crackdown has only hardened his resolve.

"Don't do this again," were his father Michael's last words to him when the two kissed goodbye in Turkey. Mo and Michael remained in Turkey.

But Abdul said he could not promise his father anything.