We’ve seen lots of the Assads’ palace, but in an upscale neighbourhood of Damascus we found their family home, where they actually lived.
What we discovered inside was staggering. This was clearly where the dictator’s British-born wife Asma loved to be, her inner sanctum where she stored her treasures.
The looters had got there first, the place was ransacked, but in Asma’s personal storage room and boudoir, the floor was covered with countless boxes for jewellery, antiques and designer goods.
But what we saw revealed the life of luxury she and her family led while her husband was orchestrating the murder of hundreds of thousands of his people, who were living in abject poverty.
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Documents are scattered across the floor
Assad in a candid family holiday photo
The Assads had clearly fled in a hurry
On the lower floor, envelopes of damning documents. Among them bank records in Asma’s maiden name, for staggering sums of money.
In interviews, the first lady of Syria insisted the Assads lived a middle class life. Few were fooled, but the extent of that fraud is becoming clear.
The home has been ransacked
Assad in his earlier years
A photo of a young Assad found in their family home
The couple have three children
The Assads had clearly fled in a hurry. In this, the Assads’ family home, we found where Asma kept her cherished mementoes of family life – all of them left behind.
There were presents her children had made for her at school, family photographs of the Assads on holiday, underwater photos of the tyrant of Damascus swimming and windsurfing.
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One of the images from inside the family home
Family photos of Assad
Games seen scatttered on the floor
The Assads’ wedding day in December 2000
On one shelf we found the photographs of the day Asma and Bashar got married. She looks adoringly into his eyes. He had brought her to Damascus from her life in London to a new one in Syria.
A life that would bring her untold wealth fortune and power but ultimately see her forced to flee the country in disgrace.
The question for Syrians will be, what happened to all her and her husband’s millions?