Syria’s first lady reveals she rejected money, offers to flee
SYRIA: Asma al-Assad, the Syrian president’s British-born wife, has said she turned down offers of financial security and safety for her children if she fled the wartorn country.
Mrs Assad, a former investment banker who married Bashar al-Assad in 2000, said the deals were ‘‘stupid’’ attempts to ‘‘undermine’’ her husband, in rare public comments to a Russian broadcaster. ’’I’ve been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else at all,’’ Mrs Assad, 41, told Russia’s stateowned Rossiya 24 channel in an interview broadcast yesterday.
She said: ‘‘Yes I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria or rather to run from Syria. These offers included guarantees of safety and protection for my children and even financial security. It doesn’t take a genius to know what these people were really after. It was a deliberate attempt to shatter people’s confidence in their president.’’.
Western sanctions had impacted ordinary Syrians in a similar manner to those against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990s, she said. She also praised Moscow’s ‘‘noble’’ intervention and economic assistance to the country. ‘‘The situation would have been much much harder if it had not been Syria’s true friends. Russia has been tremendous.’’
Mrs Assad was born to Syrian parents in London and educated at Queens College, a private girls school, and Kings College London, where she graduated with a degree in computer science in 1996. She has largely kept out of the spotlight since the outbreak of war in 2011. She is subject to EU sanctions that make it illegal to render her economic assistance and ban her from travelling in the EU with the exception of the UK, because she holds British nationality.
In her first television interview in eight years, the mother-of-three also hit out at the West for what she called double standards in coverage of the war, saying media coverage of child casualties differed ‘‘depending on the loyalties of their parents’’. She said she used her position as first lady to organise assistance for displaced people, wounded Syrian army soldiers, and the families of ‘‘martyrs’’ who have died in the war.
‘‘From my perspective it was never a question of preference. I stood by him because my conviction did not tell me otherwise,’’ she said when asked why she had stayed in Damascus with Mr Assad. ‘‘Western organisations have chosen to solely focus on refugees and those in rebel held areas, whereas the vast majority of people who have been displaced are spread across the rest of the country.’’ - Telegraph Group