Two of Bashar al-Assad’s relatives have been arrested at Beirut airport with forged passports, while his uncle, who is wanted for war crimes, has flown to Dubai.
Syria’s embassy in Lebanon suspended consular services “until further notice” on Saturday after the discovery of fake identification documents belonging to the wife and daughter of one of Assad’s cousins, Duraid Assad.
Rasha Khazem, Duraid Assad’s wife, and their daughter Shams, were smuggled illegally into Lebanon and were trying to fly to Egypt when they were arrested, The New Arab reported.
According to the Associated Press, they had been using passports believed to have been forged at the embassy.
Assad’s uncle, Rifaat Assad – Duraid’s father – is also believed to have flown from Beirut to Dubai in recent days using his real passport. He is the brother of Assad’s father, former president Hafez al-Assad.
Rifaat is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Switzerland due to his role leading elite forces that killed more than 10,000 people – as many as 40,000 by some estimates – in an uprising in Hama in 1982.
The massacre earned Rifaat the nickname the “Butcher of Hama” and he is the brother of Assad’s father, former president Hafez al-Assad.
Lebanese officials told Reuters that “many members” of the Assad family had travelled to Dubai from Beirut since Assad was toppled, and that they had not received Interpol requests to arrest them.
Bouthaina Shaaban, one of Assad’s top advisors, is thought to have flown out of Beirut after entering Lebanon legally earlier this month.
The development comes amid a drive by Syria’s new authorities, led by former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahir al-Sham, to round up regime officials and bring them to justice.
Security forces launched a large-scale operation on Thursday (December 26), resulting in nearly 300 arrests, including informants, pro-regime fighters and former soldiers, according to Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Lebanese authorities also handed over around 70 Syrians who had crossed the border illegally to the new authorities on Saturday, including former soldiers and officers of Assad’s army.
A video shared online shows a line of men walking across what appears to be a border among armed fighters. Lebanese officials said they were found during an inspection of a truck in the country’s north.
So far, the only prominent member of Assad’s regime to have been arrested is the former head of the military judiciary, Mohammed Kanjo Hassan, who was arrested alongside 20 others after clashes with regime loyalists in Tartus on Thursday.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is accused of overseeing thousands of death sentences at Damascus’s notorious Sednaya prison, nicknamed the “Human Slaughterhouse”.
