What awaits the former president of Syria and his wife Asma al-Assad?

When Bashar al-Assad was ousted on Sunday, it turned the page not only on his 24-year presidency, but also on his family’s more than 50 years of rule over Syria.

Before Assad took office in 2000, his late father Hafez was president for three decades.

Now with the rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) formation of a transitional government, the future of the ousted president, his wife and three children is uncertain.

Now they are in Russia, where they have been offered asylum, but what awaits them ahead?

Russia has been a staunch ally of Assad during the Syrian civil war and has two key military bases in the Middle Eastern country.

In 2015, Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad that turned the tide of the war in the government’s favor.

The UK-based monitoring group reported that more than 21,000 people, including 8,700 civilians, were killed in Russian military operations over the next nine years.

However, distracted by the war in Ukraine, Russia has been either unwilling or unable to help the Assad government stop the rebel blitzkrieg after it began in late November.

Hours after rebel forces seized control of Damascus, Russian state media reported that Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and would be granted asylum on “humanitarian grounds.”

But when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked by reporters on Monday about Assad’s whereabouts and asylum claim, he said: “I have nothing to tell you … right now. Of course, such a decision (on granting asylum) cannot be made without the head of state — it is his decision.”

The Assads’ ties to Russia, particularly Moscow, are well documented.

A Financial Times investigation in 2019 revealed that the extended Assad family bought at least 18 luxury apartments in the Russian capital to keep tens of millions of dollars out of Syria during the civil war.

Meanwhile, Assad’s eldest son, Hafez, is a postgraduate student in the city – just last week a local newspaper reported on the 22-year-old’s doctoral thesis.

Amid the chaos over the weekend, Russian state television reported that officials in Moscow were negotiating with the “Syrian armed opposition” to secure Russian bases and diplomatic missions.

Assad is married to British-Syrian Asma, who was born and raised in west London to Syrian parents.

She attended school and university in London before becoming an investment banker.

Asma moved to Syria full-time in 2000 and married Assad around the time he succeeded his father as president.

Dr Nesrin Alrefaai, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), told BBC News that Asma “has a British passport so she can return to the UK” rather than stay in Russia.

“However, the US (imposed) sanctions on her father, Dr. Fawaz al-Akhras, who is also reportedly in Russia,” she said, suggesting Asma may want to stay in Moscow for now.

Asma’s father, a cardiologist, and mother Sahar, a retired diplomat, were quoted by neighbors as saying they wanted to be in Moscow to “comfort” their daughter and son-in-law, according to a Mail Online report.

Asad and his wife have three children: graduate student Hafez, Zain and Karim.

A 2022 US State Department report to Congress put the extended Assad family’s net worth at between $1bn (£790m) and $2bn (£1.6bn), but noted it was difficult to estimate , because their assets are “deemed scattered”. and hidden in numerous accounts, real estate portfolios, corporations and offshore tax havens.”

According to the report, Bashar and Asma maintained “close patronage relationships with Syria’s biggest economic players, using their companies to launder money from illicit activities and channel funds to the regime.”

It also said Asma had “influence on the economic committee managing the current economic crisis in Syria” – and made key decisions on “Syrian food and fuel subsidies, trade and currency issues”.

It also had influence over the Syrian Development Fund, through which most foreign aid was channeled for reconstruction in regime-controlled areas.

In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Asma “became one of the most prominent moneylenders in Syria” with the help of her husband and family.

Another senior Trump administration official called her the “head of the family” and an “oligarch” who rivaled Bashar’s cousin Rami Makhlouf.

He is one of the richest men in Syria, and there was a family discord public after he posted the video on social media complaining about his treatment.

Since the fall of the Assad dynasty, Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said Syrians had been subjected to what she called “a horrific catalog of human rights violations that have caused untold human suffering on an enormous scale.”

This includes “attacks using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and other war crimes, as well as killing, torture, enforced disappearance and destruction, which amount to crimes against humanity.”

She called on the international community to ensure that people suspected of violating international law and other serious human rights violations should be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes.

The leader of the Islamist rebels in Syria said on Tuesday that any high-ranking officials of the ousted regime locked up in the torture of political prisoners would be named.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani also said his so-called Salvation Government for Syria would seek to repatriate officials it found had fled to another country.

in france investigating judges requested an arrest warrant for Assad for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deadly chemical attack in Syria in 2013 under the legal concept of universal jurisdiction.

Russia does not extradite its citizens – this is a legal process in which a person is returned to another country or state to stand trial on suspicion of a crime.

Assad is unlikely to leave Russia to go to a country where he can be extradited to Syria or any other country that might charge him with a crime.